Boost Your Business and Career with Writing

Over the years, I have seen quite a number of people who thought they could never write become published writers. When I hear some people talk passionately about a subject, I usually suggest they write a book about it.

The responses I get go like these. 

Image courtesy of paul/freedigitalphotos.net

“I can’t write!”

“Why do you think so?” I would ask.

“I don’t know.”

“I just can’t write.”

“I don’t know how.”

“I had never thought about it.”

With a little encouragement and consistent coaching, some of these people are already published writers, and they are excited about it because of the gains.

If you are reading this article online, then you may already know that writing has become a major tool to promote and sell products and services worldwide. Many are already taking advantage of this very effective marketing strategy, enjoying wide exposure and making great sales.

Writing remains one of the most effective means of communication and a cost-effective way to publicize and sell your business. Almost everything costs money these days and that includes writing. Organizations pay writers large sums to write business and project profiles, advertorials, announcements, etc. No one can promote your business better than you can. You will be saving a considerable sum of money, writing, to promote what you do, in your own words.

You don't have to be a licensed writer to promote your products or services. All you need is the interest, a readiness to write, laced with some resolve and a splash of creativity.

I am very passionate about sharing knowledge and I don’t like to see people say valuable things that are not being recorded for others to learn.  

Writing is simply putting words or thoughts down on paper or a computer. The same way you will talk about your business to a potential client is the same way you write. Just write as if you are talking to someone or save your words on an audio or video recorder, then write out.

Write about your business and all that is associated with it; the problems your business addresses and how you or your product can help with solutions. You can publish your writings as articles in newspapers and magazines and as a book or pamphlet. You can also submit your work to online sites. All these can offer unlimited free marketing opportunities, widen your reach and enhance your credibility.

What is the nature of your business?     

What problem is it packaged to solve?

Why do you think people need it?

What solution is it offering?

How is it used?

Write down everything you think your customers will find useful. Write about other topics and issues of interest that relates to your product or service.

For example, if you are into pharmaceuticals, you can write articles or books on healthy living and drug misuse.

If you deal in shoes, write about how people can take care of their feet and shoes.

If you are a teacher, share your experiences of teaching. Write down tips and skills you have acquired that has helped you become a good teacher.

If you are a pediatrician, you can focus on issues that relates to children. Write a book or article showing parents simple steps to prevent childhood diseases.

If you are a nurse, write a book about the challenges of care giving or share tips on how to juggle night duties and family life. You can also address the temperament of some nurses and the effect it has on patients.

I can go on and on suggesting writing ideas for every profession on earth. 

When you write about your business and career, apart from making a name and money, you are sharing something valuable and recording it for posterity. You can never tell the places your work will get to or the lives it will touch.

Therefore, write about the results your business has achieved. How effective your product is or how satisfactory your services are. Share testimonies of happy clients. Interview your clients and write out their stories. Testimonials have proved very effective in marketing.

You can also write about your personal experiences. How you started the business or career, the challenges you faced and how you overcame them. This information will be useful to others who are interested in the same profession. Through this, you can become a coach in your field, teaching others how to avoid some of the mistakes you made. Before you know it, you will start getting mails from people asking you for business advice and inviting you to come and speak in some conferences.

If you don’t market yourself or your products and services, who will?

If you can’t write and you need to, share your thoughts and ideas with a ghost writer, who will help you to write.

That's one of the things we do at Penparables. We turn your writing ideas into an article or a book. If you need help with getting started, get in touch. We will guide you through, from the idea stage to the bookstores.

E-mail - penparables@gmail.com

Grace Olumayowa Aideloje

Grace is a Writer, Editor and Proofreader. She teaches Writing Classes and motivates young writers to write and publish their works. Her passion is to empower people through knowledge sharing. She is the initiator of the Christian WAR Forum.

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THE WRITER’S EYES

Writers have the tendency to neglect their health as they dig for writing  ideas, task the mind on the choice of words and expressions, race to meet  deadlines etc. if you are passionate about writing, you must have subjected your body to some unhealthy practices. Well, as the year round off, we must decide to take care of ourselves, so we can continue to write.

Here is an article a dear friend of mine contributed to my Writers’ Digest a few years ago. It’s titled, The Writer’s Eyes. You don’t have to be a writer to read this.

Enjoy!

Grace Greatman

THE WRITER’S EYES

Dr. (Mrs.) Oma Ulu –Optometrist

Image courtesy of Google Images

The writer’s eyes are a vital asset to him. Without them, he will be utterly limited. Every seeing writer fears to go blind. Yet many do not know how to give adequate care and attention to these organs that facilitates the writing passion. The eyes are a part of the body, the two organs that you see with. This organ of vision measures just 24mm and weighs 7.5 grams. Our eyes allow us to perceive light, dark and color in astonishing detail, revealing the beauty and complexity of the world around us.

The human eye is remarkable. It accommodates to changing lighting conditions and focuses light rays originating from various distances on the eye. When all the components of the eye function properly, light is converted to impulses and conveyed to the brain where an image is perceived. However, some common practices engaged by people are harmful to the eyes and may eventually leave a permanent damage.

Here are some activities you should not engage in when you are in the dark or in a place that is poorly lit.

Image courtesy of Google Images

      1. Reading and writing

      2.   Working on the computer

      3.   Watching television

Doing these three things in an environment that is poorly illuminated result into headache, strain and pain in the eyes. 

Image courtesy of Graur Razvan Ionut/freedigitalphotos.net
  

These discomforting symptoms may cause you to stop reading or working on the computer, thereby reducing your productivity. Although, these effects are just temporary discomforts that go away once you sleep or take a break, the strain they cause may degenerate your eyesight as you become old.

WHAT TO DO

1. Ensure adequate illumination of your environment.

2. Don’t work with the computer in the dark. This is because the contrast between computer-generated light and lack of background light strains the eye.

3. Task light should be positioned to provide direct light for reading and other office work, but not to shine directly on the computer or in your eyes.

I will discuss some other harmful practices to the eyes in the next edition.

Meanwhile visit an eye doctor for routine eye examinations especially when there is a noticeable change in the eyes.

Compliments of the Season

Enjoy God’s Exceeding Grace!

STAY MOTIVATED - MIMI’S STORY

Image Courtesy of Stuart Miles/ freedigitalphotos

Still talking about staying motivated, you need more than Willpower, you need a strong motivation.

What is motivating you to do what you do?

If you want to write a book; why?

If you want to go to school; why?

If you want to get married; why?

You should not decide to do something because others are doing it, you need a stronger motive than that or you will quit before you finish.

 Mimi is a dietician. About seven years ago, she told me of her desire to write a book on Healthy Eating. I asked her why and she said she wanted to be a successful author.

 Do you think her motive was vague and weak?
She started with so much zeal, and wrote the drafts for five chapters in a week. Then she met Paul and this hot romance started. She soon put the desire to be a successful author on the back burner. For two years, her job at a high profile hospital and her love life with Paul were enough to make her forget her goal.

What happened to her aspiration to become a successful author? 
The affair broke up and she was devastated especially by the fact that Paul left her for a well-known former beauty queen. That dealt a fatal blow on her self-esteem. When she recovered, the desire to be that successful author came back with full force.

Why did the desire return with a vengeance?

How long can the steam last? 
At an amazing speed, she finished the first draft of the book and sent it to me for editing. Her goal was to get the book published in a month. I was so busy then I didn’t have time to see her manuscripts and she harassed me so well I had no choice but to leave every other thing to look at her job. I made some corrections and observations, sent it to her, expecting to get it back in a few days. But it didn’t come. Two weeks later, I called her and was surprised at her response.

She and Paul had reconciled and she had been too busy to see the manuscripts.

Why and how did her desire evaporate so fast? 
Four years and two kids later, a sack letter and divorce papers from Paul, Mimi became a shadow of her former self.

Faced with raising her two kids alone, no paid employment and not only a broken heart but a shattered self-image, Mimi had a strong need to pursue her abandoned dream of writing a book.

She had converted the ground floor of her duplex to a Clinic and started a private practice as a Nutrition Specialist.

As her clientele increased, she found it necessary to finish her book to help her patients and others gain necessary knowledge on healthy living. 

How would you compare this motive with to the first one? 
So, she updated the book and within a few months published it. It was an instant success. She started a blog on Healthy Living that soon began to thrive. This increased her clientele. She wrote two other books within a year and became a co-host for a television health show.

What motivated Mimi to eventually realize her desire to be a successful author? 

What motivates you to do something is what keeps your Willpower on. The stronger your motive and desire, the stronger your Willpower.

The first assignment we have this year in my Writing Group is to purify our motives by making it clear, personal, purpose-driven and value-adding.

I will talk more about this next.

In the meantime, why don't you work on purifying your motives for some of your goals.

Enjoy God’s Exceeding Grace

TWO ARTICLES ON WRITING FROM MARIE GROSSETT

BEST SELLING AUTHOR’S ADVICE FOR ASPIRING WRITERS

Most people like to read about how successful people made it in their chosen profession and the advice they give to the 'up and comings.' I assume you're no different! You too like to read your favourite authors’ life story and the counsel they give.

Since you like to do this, I've rustled up guidance from three bestselling and award winning authors that I have interviewed, to give you statements of encouragement.
The question I asked them was, 'What advice would you give to aspiring authors who want to make it in the industry?'

Debora M. Coty who has written books such as 'Too blessed to be stressed' and is an award winner of over 100 internationally published articles and ten inspirational books says:

"I'd share a quote given to me by a dear friend Sherill, who was dying of brain tumour, "Work to become, not to acquire" (Elbert Hubbard, American writer, 1856-1915). Everyone encounters that "Spinning your wheels" rut at some point in building their careers. The important thing for writers is to just keep pedaling, honing your craft, polishing your technique, learning, learning, always learning. You have to believe that one day soon, your spinning tire will finally grip and propel you back up on the road again. I liken preserving to jockeys who encounter horses’ poo as an occupational hazard. They simply step over the piles, wipe the nasty off their boots, and keep moving forward."

Judy Baer who has written books, “Mending Her Heart” and “Sleeping Beauty” says:

"I'm self taught since I didn't know any writer when I started and the big writers' organizations had not yet begun. I read about writing, I read books that were of the type I thought my books would be. I took classes. I poured over Writer's Market and I wrote and wrote and wrote. I compared my prose to that of big writers and tried to see what techniques they'd used to make their stories compelling. I think motivation, determination and refining the craft can do a lot for the aspiring writer. Of course you should always read. Frankly, I listen to books on tape now rather than read because I find myself analyzing. It is either I’m thinking of how it could be improved or wishing I'd been clever enough to write like that!"

Fiction writer Tricia Goyer who is the author of 30 books and has over 500 articles published in national publications such as “Focus on the Family,” “Today's Christian Woman” and “Home Life Magazine” says:

"Attend a writer's conference. What you learn, who you meet, and your view of the industry is worth the cost! Write! So many people want to be writers but they never get words on paper. Write about everything you think of...that's how you'll discover your passion, style and voice.”

THE WRITER’S BLOCK

"Right onto the next chapter," you mutter to yourself. But as your fingers begin to touch the keyboard or the tip of your pen touches the paper, your mind goes blank.

"This can't be happening right now, what's going on?" You wonder.

The symptom is called Writer's Block.

There are times when your creative juices just pours into your imagination that you just can't stop writing, and yes there are times when the pouring comes to a halt! I know this can be annoying but it does happen even to bestselling authors.

When interviewing romance author Joan Wolf I asked her if she ever suffers Writer's Block she answered: "I've never been blocked to the point where I can't sit down and write, but I have certainly come upon points in my books where things weren't going smoothly and I felt as if I was trying to swim through a molasses. I have found in the past that changing points of view sometimes gets me going again. Sometimes you just have to write through it."

Joan is right sometimes you just have to write through it.

Here are some tips on what you can do to unblock your imagination.

·        Go for a walk get some fresh air! We can take for granted the things we see around us just because they are familiar to us. It could be a building, a park with children playing and ducks swimming in the pond. But out of these could be inspiration for your next chapter. So, don't take it for granted as there could be a story out of the things you see around you.

·        Go back to the drawing board, what is the message of your book what do you want people to learn from it. Going back to basics could help you get your imagination active again. If you are writing fiction, is there anything you can add or take away? It could be a character or the plot of the story or maybe a scenario doesn't go well with a character.

Finally, as mentioned before you just have to, sometimes, write your way through, write the first sentence that comes to your thoughts and just work your way from there.

Writer's Block is just temporary, so don't get disheartened if you experience it just keep on writing.

Marie Grossett aka Vanessa Grossett is a published Author, and has interviewed best selling and award winning Christian Authors.

She now manages The Authors Care Agency which helps aspiring Authors break into the publishing industry. For more information email authorscare@gmail.com

Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com-CHRISTIAN WRITERS