Here I will talk about some general tips on writing. I derive these basically from my own perspective about writing. I haven't referred to any articles or websites here; they may give something more or may be a lot more, but nothing that i say here will prove incorrect. All these are practical ideas, based on my own experiences. I will list them out here...
1. Personal stories or stories about your own family won't sell here. Nobody other than yourself, or your immediate family will be interested to read about you. There are of course tricks to sell them, cover up them in nice wrappers. If you've read any of self-help books by popular authors, you will understand what i mean here. Most of them typically use examples from their own lives to convey something. The author typically highlights the benefits we will bring into our own lives, if we learn from their personal stories, live the life the way they do. Autobiographies, I think are the only exceptions to this rule. If you are a popular figure in any field of work, an autobiography can help you sell all this and even more - basically any crap:-) But, we are not 'them'! So, don't attempt to copy them.
2. Don't borrow excessively from other websites or blogs. Nobody will be interested to read something that is an exact replica of another site or a blog. Links to other sites, however are not all that bad idea. Also, compilations of related pieces of information from seemingly disjoint websites is an excellent idea, that will sell. Though, said easily, there is a lot of work you should do, to make this effective and useful.
3. Set themes for writing upon. This will help organise your thoughts and ideas. For example, you can have themes about 'how to be...', 'what is your ideal...' etc. Replace the dots with anything you feel like, 'How to be a good student' or 'How to be a good human being?' and flesh them out with some readable substance.
4. Learn the art of abstraction (I borrow this term from the new age computer languages). There are a zillion things that happen in our life almost everyday, and ideas that criss-cross our minds all the time. It will be a terrible thing to talk about each of these individually. If you look closer, these zillion things are not unrelated. Group them into categories. When you have enough flesh in each categories, we term them as experiences. Experiences will form good subjects to write on. People will value your experiences, because no two individuals can have exact same experiences. Similarly, ideas are things that are worth sharing with others. People will really apprecite them and will give rise to newer ideas. So, it will help make many lives than you even imagine, richer. One word of caution, however. It will have the desired impact only when done unconsciously, while consciously trying to abstract something will overstress you, at least in the long run.
There are a few more, which I will cover in the next post.
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