not only copying something but obtaining a certain skill through the gathering of criteria: internal (beliefs and values) and external (specific rules and actions/behavior). So, he watched everything I did while I was writing.
We noticed that I sat fixedly. My legs and body did not move; only my hands and eyes were doing the work. It might be obvious to you, but my friend was surprised. Normally, when he was writing, he constantly changed his position; his hands were on his face, lips, keyboard; he was bending his legs or sitting with his feet on the floor. He fidgeted.
The beginners’ mistake is that they do not pay attention to the right place, position and condition (state). That is why they think they need ‘patience to work’. When the body is resting, the head is working, productivity is higher, and attention is more focused. The body does not ask for comfort, food, convenience – it is fine. It is in a trance. A trance is achieved when you can fully concentrate on writing, excluding everything else. It is a state of focusing completely on one thing – in our case on writing. It is the only way to love it. But how can you find this state?
Look for a comfortable body position while you are working. Think about your favorite place: the chair, the sofa, the floor? How do you prefer to sit: foot on foot, legs straight, legs under your bottom? Or maybe you like to lay down? Which sounds help you: silence, classical music, office noise, subway noise? What do you want to see around you: a mess, an order, a beautiful interior? Or where do you like to be: at home, in the office, in a cafe, in a co-working studio, in a park, in the countryside? Analyze and prepare your place for work. You do not live in outer space or in a prison, I hope, so you can always leave, change your setting, and arrange a work space, or… just go into a trance. I can write anywhere; I do not care what is around me. I just open my laptop and start to work. My body is still, and my breathing slows down. I achieve a trance-like state and do not notice anything around me. Nothing can irritate or distract me. Remember that a trance is a full mental concentration on one object. It is natural to all of us when we read, watch a film or drive a car. It is natural and useful when we are writing, and it helps us to be more focused on something and, thus, to be calm and productive.
If you know a comfortable place and a body position you can work in while relaxed, you should sit the same way and in the same condition next time. It seems easy: the body can always be seated in the right chair, with your arms and legs perfectly aligned. Well, what about the state then? It is vulnerable and has no shell.
The right state can be achieved as soon as you get into the right place. Actually, the state is achieved with the right pose: when your body is relaxed and fixed in a comfortable position, and your breathing is slow, you feel calm. But there are a lot of states (interest, inspiration, excitement, curiosity), so it is not only achieved by position. It is also dependent on a process. The state does not exist separately from you, you can create it on your own.
Information and meaning
Information is the content, facts, a brief (a client’s questionnaire); it is specifics. If I want to write some information, I ask myself: what do I want to say? Information is something new that I tell the reader.
Meaning is an aim, an idea, a sense, or a significance. If I want to determine the meaning, I ask myself: why do I want to say this? The first answer is for nothing. That is alright. By default, there is enough of everything in the universe, it does not need your texts. This must be accepted and forgotten. The second answer is for myself; the most honest answer, actually. All authors write for great reasons for sure; to change the world, but we write for ourselves, because we love to write, we need to write, we cannot live without it and we enjoy it. After all, when you have accepted that your text is not needed and you write for yourself, you can give the third answer – I write to tell people something. Selling texts, copywriting, and mass-media texts are the kind of text that is written to ‘tell people’ something, because you could live without this text and the readers did not ask for it, but you should write it to tell about a product.
The meaning is what you mean, but you are not saying it directly, although the meaning can be said aloud: it is a thesis, a theme, sometimes it is a title. Ivan Krylov, a well-known Russian fabulist, prescribed the meaning of each fable with the words: “the moral of this fable is…” But at the end of the advertising text, you do not write “this text is published to arouse your trust” or “I wrote a post so that you sympathize” or “This ad encourages you to buy a toothbrush”. Nevertheless, we use conversion phrases (call-to-action): “Buy our new pesticide-free cucumbers”. This task we will consider in selling text structure. Now, we are discussing what prevents us from writing, so up to this moment, we have two questions: WHAT do I want to say and WHY do I want to say it. If you already have the information (you interviewed your client or you have something to say), you know WHAT you want to say and you can put it down. Some people really do not know what they want to say, that is why they spend hours in front of a blank sheet of paper. They should get some information in order to express the clients’ opinion or their own (depending on the goal).
Well, you know WHAT you want to say, but still spend time in front of the blank, white sheet. What is next? You should ask the third question: HOW do I want to say it? ‘HOW’ is a strategy, a method, a process. ‘HOW’ is a composition (structure), grammar (editing) and the way I write. This way is called freewriting – the best way to write. I learned about it from Mark Levy’s Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content
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