A terse conversation with a writer friend

“Sir, can a write-up be as good as it supposed to be if I make it look good or readable?”

This question was asked by one of my teammates recently. He is also a content writer in a team which I head. I found the question interesting so I replied carefully.

I said – “If you present your article in a good way by keeping things in order, writing short sentences, and making your information lucid, it will surely increase its readability factor. However, that doesn’t make it an informative and quality piece at all.”

Confused by my explanation, as expected, I received another question from him.

He asked – “I didn’t quite follow you, sir? Are readability and quality two different aspects of writing?”

“Yes, they are!” was my answer. “If you make an article readable, people will likely to take a look at it.  They will feel interested to read it. They may stay on your write up a bit longer.”

“However, this sort of writing discipline doesn’t preclude your write up from catching enthusiastic response from your readers. I mean to say, they will read your content but not for longer if it doesn’t convey values.”

“The point is, readability is one thing and quality is quite another. To make your write up a compelling read for your readers, you have to write it keeping things in both ways.

For example, you need to make it readable and include some interesting facts so that it sounds a great reading. Unless readers feel they are being enlightened in a certain way by your manuscript, they will not stay on your write-up, regardless of how readable way.”

“What if quality content is not readable?”

“That will surely kill the spirit of reading. Suppose I have written a blog and have forgotten to make it readable, there is no use of it for my readers. Though quality-wise, some people may like to read it, but the write-up will fail to earn sizeable viewership count. And this viewership count is a vital touchstone for establishing credence of your craft.”

“If I think correctly, writing is not simply being quality, yes?”

“Absolutely. You have to ensure if your piece is really presentable in both ways – readability and quality wise. To make your write up readable, include points-wise narration of your facts in it. To make it quality, make sure those points are tenable and don’t mean simply a confabulation.

“What about grammar then?”

“See, I will never advise you to be a grammar Nazi. Respect it but not to the point of compromising it with your creativity. Keep singularity and plurality of your Verbs based on their corresponding Subject. Using proper grammar in sentences is an acquired taste; you will come to know of it eventually. Just practice hard.”

My standpoint on how to make your writing attention grabber

To my subjective comprehension as a writer, one must write to EXPRESS, not to IMPRESS.

Having said that, make your writing READABLE; not from the standpoint of what it is, but also from the perspective of how it can help the readers learn from it.

Here is my gentle persuasion for you in this context.

Avoid being besotted with ‘Attention seeking” individual. Also, do not get obsessed with ‘Excellence’, though you must try harder to improve the quality of your craft a notch higher. Thinking that you can make your piece of writing attention grabber is not gonna happen unless you make it readable and informative.

As long as you keep on writing good pieces of stuff that could enlighten others positively, you are always miles ahead in the race than others who write down things just to impress others.

I have also come to an understanding (I find this knowledge quite valuable) that if you have a sizeable stock of “interesting and action-provoking” words, your writing will always stand out from the rest. However, it doesn’t mean to boast of how verbose you are with the words.

Textual eloquence (the way you speak your mind through words) without a real substance falls apart to the discretion of readers, especially those like to read something of substantial value than your verbose write-up. Such write ups draw attention from readers, but just for a short while.

One of the most important reasons behind increasing bounce rates of a website is thin content or the content written for the purpose of impressing others. On the contrary, such writing tactic could pronounce a counterproductive means for your forte; say, for example, readers will turn down your manuscript condemning it a bombastic piece of your confabulation.

I have also learned from my experience, that you can’t impress everyone with your writing. This is not because there is something wrong in your creative expression; it might be like the kind of stuff you are sharing is not actually for EVERYONE.

For example, if you are sharing your expertise on CLOUD COMPUTING on Quora, your stuff will draw the attention of the readers genuinely interested in reading such stuff. Your writing will not entice the readers seeking something else, say, for example, information on why La La Land Oscar win is a disastrous turn of event for Hollywood.

It is good to have mastery of grammar and use this knowledge in in your writing, but you should avoid using it to an extent beyond which your writing looks like nothing but a piece of the robotically generated manuscript; tasteless, uninteresting, and boring.

I mean to say using grammar in your sentence promotes admissibility of your allegiance to grammar, but it also affords to make your write-up sound insipid. For the sake of maintaining taste and appeal, try to restrict grammatical involvement in your writing.

Great poets like Wordsworth, Tennyson loved their creative expressions and spoke their mind through words without thinking about grammar.

Common grammatical mistakes like SUBJECT+VERB+AGREEMENT must definitely be followed. Obsession with grammar kind of slows down creative expression or it makes you feel disoriented.

Content is king, and it is not a LIE

I have just read a headline of SEJ (SEARCH ENGINE JOURNAL) post, announcing that it is the biggest falsehood to pronounce that content is king.

I have not read the article at all, as the headline of it made me upset, wondering what the heck was the writer meant by that sort of (CLICK BAIT) headline.

I understand that SEO or search engine optimization has evolved distinctively from its erstwhile and unacceptable blackhat SEO tactic to its modernistic and a rather acceptable transition, in which nobody can refute significance of content. Today’s SEO understands what content could do to the status-quo of a website. Believe it or not, it is an integral part of SEO tactic.

My take is that content must be thanked for its great contribution to the success of a website or business of a brand. If that were not the case, and content, as impugned by so called reputable web sources, were not considered to be the prime factor for any brand involved in the digital marketing, we wouldn’t have witnessed the success of many websites today, including the Copyblogger and similar ones.

These sources are considered credible by their visitors, not because these sources are optimised from the perspective of their website’s layout, graphical beauty, linking tactics; and a host of algorithm-atic works called On-Page SEO.

They are popular today because of their high-quality content; the information which has helped their visitors learn something new, and has broadened their viewpoints or ideology positively or has compounded their perspective in a new way of observing things.

I have been writing content for the last 5 years. The era my profession as a writer belongs to was the era when witnessing meaningless textual contents on any subject that demanded your narrative to be quality and users-centric was the order of the day. I was told by my employers to stuff an article/blog with a set of keywords prioritised based on their relevance pertaining to increasing SERP stand of their websites in Google.

Probably, even the search engines were not advanced in those days, which was the reason why inundation of cheap content full of keywords and backlinks registered their (annoying) dominance on the Internet. Though writers were in demand and bulk contents were written to maintain a continual supply of content to the content mill or to those online platforms trading content for their clients.

However, even in those days, I sort of felt relaxed to see that content was still regarded as the mainstay for branding a product/service. If I recollect correctly, I used to receive many requests for short content to be written for small brands, and a guy told me once that without sufficient content, his website went into the pit of Google’s abysmal space. Well, not practically…..he meant to say the dearth of sufficient content had the ranking of his website collapsed in Google and he was then at the receiving end of losing a business of much, much money (he did not elaborate on that part).

Now there is nothing like that. Google and other search engines pulled up their socks. They became smarter. They started to whiplash the website owners promoting bad content. Google, of course, has gone far ahead compared to its counterparts. The point is, among all the launching of new and upgraded algorithms of Google, one thing that I have personally observed is that they are giving priority, I mean, serious priority to the CONTENT. If you don’t believe me, read Google’s PANDA update.

This algorithm is like Terence Fletcher, a jazz instructor in the movie, WHIPLASH. I hope you guys have watched the movie. Just as Terence was to Andrew Neiman, Panda is to the websites with THIN CONTENT.

Well, there’s just one difference, though. Panda, unlike Terence, will not tell you what to do if your tune (behaviour) doesn’t accord quite to its TEMPO 🙂

Anyway, my point is – content is really a king, and it is not a hoax. What matters essentially in this context, though, is that NOT ALL CONTENT CAN BE SAID, KING. The content that gives you some knowledge; and information that you were seeking, a perspective that you wanted to be changed positively and informatively can be said, KING.

Here, king stands for SIGNIFICANCE. The significance quotient of your content is what determines its VALUE, for your target readers, and for your target SE (search engine/s).

I don’t mean to discredit SEO at all. I believe a combination of quality SEO and quality Content could be the culmination of a powerful branding. The result of such unification is always substantial, in the manifestation of widespread visibility of your brand, better engagement, great retention ratio, and an increased chance for lead’s conversion.

Creative Content Writing – Surviving in the presumed dead SEO era

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Creative Content Writing (CCW) afford reciprocal bond. Both synchronisingly work to improve the traffic streams of a website.

If this logic is to be concluded, SEO and CCW are interconnected and (they) function mutually towards serving a common goal – to optimize a website’s rank in search engines and its visibility across virtual world.

While SEO is losing prominence of what it enjoyed years back, creative content writing, in contrast, has undergone a productive transition, so distinctive in nature that even search engine giant, Google, has emphatically pronounced content as the king of websites.

Therefore, the websites festooned with quality and user-friendly content will most surely enjoy conspicuous healthy ranking in Google. The reason is, Google’s algorithms (namely Penalty Algorithm) have already made it mandatory for website-owners to publish content delivering real values to the readers.

So to say, the search engine requires content to be non-plagiarized, non-duplicate, and that doesn’t sound off negatively biased reviews. Content accommodating needs of readers in terms of solving their query and educating them of a new subject will prove to be a quantum leap for a website to have an improved ranking in a search engine.

The implication is, none can deny significance of a powerful content, not even mighty search engine, Google.

Penalty Algorithm

Penalty Algorithm was introduced by Google search engine when it found some major sites enjoying substantial chunk of visibility and ranking in search result did not stand up to the mark with their “published” content on their domains, something Google considered…obsolete customs.

Gone are the days when websites used to be having widespread visibility through SEO-dedicated practices (black-hat SEO) which are strictly banned or no longer used today.

However, SEO-enthusiasts went nuts and downplayed the claim pronouncing its imminent extinction from the World Wide Web.

They asserted that the claim circulating around death of SEO was just a deadpan claptrap peddled by gossip-mongers and therefore, the claim did not carry much weight.

To them, SEO will stay alive with its prominence fully intact as long as the web worldexists.

Is that true? Is search engine optimization yet in practice?

Well, I tend to believe such claim to be unquestionably valid on certain counts.

For instance, Google really doesn’t read your content. It reads Meta tag, keywords and other HTML-fashioned markup language. Such language is scripted programmatically in a way conducive to Googlebot as to helping it read and understand the underlying nature of your website’s business on the web world.

So to say, if the Googlebot doesn’t make out the exact nature of your website (what it does) on the basis of on-page SEO technicalities, your website will not fare well in its search results. Most probably, Google will eliminate it from its gigantic database, a real death knell for any website-owner.

Understandably, the amount of traffic streams that your website receives are not the sole work of its content’s quality, but rather (unseen) technicality of search engine optimization technique.

No doubt, even in this virtually non-SEO era (as believed by some experts), I concur, quality content alone can’t qualify to attain first ranking in search engines unless fully optimized in conjugation with the guidelines of SEO. And of course in conformity with the rules of search engines.

Does that mean creative content writing is falsely proclaimed as the king of the web?

Nope, not at all!

Google does appreciate on-page inscription on a website done by SEO-technocrat, but if the search engine doesn’t notice sizable influx of quality traffic driving to your domain based on several parameters, including number of shares of your content and quality visibility of your website, then your website gradually comes in harm’s way.

So to say, it earns dismissive regard from Google, or say falls into oblivion. The website’s ranking gradually slides into the galaxy of numerous vain and non-valuable websites floating up and down in their confined black hole.

The point is, content, especially the ones delivering values and worth to readers, is unequivocally a king. SEO is (objectionably) presumed dead; especially the black-hat SEO tactic is a long-dead practice, which was considered to be a hen laying golden eggs.

To their disappointment, such (mal)-practice is obliterated.

And why not, it was something long overdue, wasn’t it?

Creative content writing in consortium with quality SEO will reinforce authority of any domain publicly available on the web. Though the value of SEO is decreasing, as even Google and similar search engine giants prefer to rank a website that delivers values to readers, which according to Google’s RankBrain Algorithm, is a practice serving the needs of human rather than bots.

It understandably underscores importance of writers and the significance of creative content writing in today’s presumed dead SEO era.

Single step at a time concludes writing

When Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to have reached at the summit of the Mt. Everest, the unprecedented victory erupted into a global spotlight for the duos, making them a household name worldwide.

Keeping aside the universal howl of praises for the extraordinary trek on the elusive summit of the Everest, I think both the mountaineers earned the triumph because of their go-getting and undying zeal.

What is notable from the achievement is, they STARTED first before becoming the victorious of their daring initiative.

Will you dare think they flew up on the summit or their achievement was an accident? No, I guess you will disapprove to such silly thought. Factually, their victory was written in every step-by-step trek they’d taken at the initiation of mountaineering.

That said, you need to take step by step process and don’t worry what sort of mistake you’d come across during the course of writing. Mistakes are respondent to our deed, triggering the warning signs that there are something which need to be fixed, rather than whimper on them like a loser.

The quote – slow and steady wins the race – may sound redundant, but I think this adage still holds its relevancy in the modern context, and it is a loud reminiscent of the mountaineering trek of Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.

When I decided to go for writing, I became the confused victim of choosing one conclusive decision from the labyrinth of options, suggestions and pieces of advice pouring from various intelligent minds and from diverse online sources. I studied every of them, but ‘first start writing’ narrowed down my choice and I decisively stayed firm on that. When I started first, it was not just grabbing a pen and a copy and writing things aimlessly.

As a matter of fact, I did start to write, but tried to learn from the mistakes and what essentials did I need to learn to make my writing good. The catch is, if I hadn’t started first and kept on reading countless pieces of advice, I would have been the same confused individual undecided where to start from.

If you start to write, only then you will learn your necessities.

This pictorial quote concludes my standpoint on writing:

Writing – The Thankless Job of Addressing Faceless Audience

Famous and widely acclaimed American novelist, Stephen King said somewhere in his public interaction with fans, that his wife was the real and only audience he wrote a novel in the memory of.

For a writer like me, it came as a surprise to learn how come a world famous novelist not attributing his millions of fans to his books’ roaring success, and instead, he gave credit to the single individual for his worldwide success?

Well, I might be wrong in my way of analyzing his statement, as I believe, writing is largely associated with the writer’s personal creativity and his novelty of letting out ideas. Also, there is always a source the writer obtains inspiration from, as happens in the case of Stephen.

However, after learning the account of the novelist, I came across with a new-born and somewhat an innovative idea, something that prompted me to have a second-thought on my writing and the style I use to represent my thoughts/viewpoints.

I just concentrated my focus onto one thing after much contemplativeness – audience!

Yes, my writing was sorely affected with the mania of addressing all the audiences worldwide regardless of the fact that I had preached several times in many of my articles/blogs against not inviting the obsession with all the readers. However, when I wrote something, I just couldn’t comprehend the perfunctory whimsicality of addressing all the audiences. I was virtually falling in the trap of “I can please everyone” sort of delusional belief.

After Stephen King, another statement from an equally renowned, world-famed writer, William Zinsser, turned out to be an outlook-changer, especially in the perspective of how I handled my writing in the foolish or possibly wishful (figment of) imagination, that “Every reader worldwide is reading my stuff” – and which afforded unenthusiastic response and poor visibility of my blogs/articles.

Mr. Zinsser, in his book, On Writing Well, said,

“Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.”

Whoa! Wondrous, isn’t?

Writing is supposed to be a channel of externalizing your thoughts/ideas in a standard fashion of your gifted creativity, lest the very creativity should be degenerated into an abject eccentricity of your artistic expressions.

When writing of such style becomes an ingrained and habituated second-nature of a writer, the acquired taste to misrepresent facts is bound to occur, eventually. That said, the writer attains the mentality of “Appeasement policy” where he/she subconsciously places every audience (faceless audiences) in his mind as the reader of his/her stuff.

In that stage of mindset, the writer blithely escorts the idea of ‘audience-pleaser’.

It is not bad to keep your audience happy until you mean it otherwise. Being fixated with the mindset of appeasing everyone denotes the (incurable) mentality of enslaving yourself to their happiness.

The fact is – YOU CAN’T PLEASE EVERYONE.

In India, while certain section of readers loves the writing of Chetan Bhagat, the other sections abhor it based on their comparison with other favorite writers of theirs.

However, does Chetan give a damn to the haters?

I guess, not. He’s perhaps well aware of his REAL audiences.

And, if Chetan or any writer who rents this futile comparison a space in their head, then I am afraid, the writer will soon lose his own creativity, the natural flair to EXPRESS ideas.

Your creativity shouldn’t be compromised on the ethos advocating appeasement of all readers. True, that no writer can survive without certain section of fan-readers, those audiences who wait for your next release and who do not hesitate buying your new book at any cost. But at the same time, it is not befitting of any writer to have the obsession with keeping every reader happy.

It is IMPOSSIBLE.

Paying heed to every audience under the false assumption that they will surely love your write-up is a thought you need to put that out of your mind. It is unrewarding. It is thankless attempt of yours.

For example, do you believe your expertise in writing articles about healthcare can benefit those readers who are interested in reading something about latest technologies?

Do you think your article that shares generous amount of information about gardening tips can be of helpful anyway for those who favor deforestation of every plant on the earth?

Or, can your support about existence of God convince the mindset of atheists or profane who do not like their anti-God beliefs being challenged?

You need to ponder on these questions. It will help you understand that the world is fraught with people having different viewpoints based on their tastes, religions and casts. In short, addressing all the audiences is a thankless job. Just have your own unique creativity. Do not sound like the zerox copy of someone else. Quit the habit of pleasing everyone.

It is best to have few, real audiences and be happy with your niche, than trying to please everyone and suffer from the consequence of poor creativity, whimsical representation of ideas, and then being a writer having no loyal audience.

If you loved the blog and have something different on your mind, do not hesitate to share your viewpoints! 

If You Want To Be A Good Writer: Write A Lot

In my previous post, If you want to be a good writer – Read a Lot, I’d narrated the one significant quotation of Stephen King where the statement emphasized the importance of reading books for anyone wishing to be a writer in their life.

Now, this blog post highlights significance of his another statement to which he suggested writers ought to write a lot in order to be best in their niche.

What are the salient benefits of writing a lot, especially when it is an emphatic point behind improving one’s writing skill?

A scintillating improvement to your creative expression manifests due to writing a lot:

One of the most remarkable benefits of writing that you may experience is visible improvement in your creative expression, albeit the condition behind manifestation of such a notable improvement in your writing is subject to persistent practice backed by your commitment and dedication.

Writing is indeed a commitment of giving your hundred and one percent to this lexical aspect of contextualizing words. Apparently, you must ensure that the continuity of the practice is unbreakable even though it may sound physically and mentally demanding task.

Writing a lot gives you an improved understanding of your subject matter:

I’ve personally observed over the five years of writing that I’ve mastered over many subjects with an improved insight of their subtle meaning.

Though I was professionally obliged to comply certain rules and regulations associated with my professional association with my employer organizations in relation with writing contents for their marketing purposes, however, my contribution also helped me with an improved insight about those subjects I wrote contents about.

Writing a lot qualifies you for a host of writing jobs demanding someone with specialization into writing:

If you believe that specialization in writing comes through having yourself enrolled for a writing course in a university, then I don’t think that is actually the most realistic and trustworthy way to gain the specialization. Rather, I tend to believe that if one is hell-bent and labors hard for writing with dedication, very soon he will gain the required expertise.

Moreover, in due course of time, his month-long persistent practice will help him qualified for writing jobs demanding specialized writer. Yes, this is possible, but such an excellence comes through persistence.

I do not want to demean the credibility of such writing program offered by university and different institutions worldwide, for they are certainly credited to have given the world numerous writers who are respectively known among us for their creative or unique expressions.

I just want to point out that writing a lot with dedication and constant practice can also give you the required excellence and specialization that you may have sought otherwise through those creative writing courses designed to make you expert at your niche, but in return of monetary charges.

Writing develops your communication power convincingly:

If you indulge yourself into writing with dedication and perseverance, very soon you gather an improved communication power; you can actually master the art of persuading or impressing others. This is not an overnight result at all; you need a lot of time to finally master this art, but make no doubt that if you continue writing, you’ll have the communication mastery.

Writing a lot, conclusively, is one of the most effective techniques to improve your writing skill together with giving you additional awesome benefits. Though I’ve personally observed that most writers are introvert and usually confine themselves into their introversion believing that’s the safest room in the world to create a masterpiece.

And no doubt that most classic books that we find today were actually originated from the mind of those writers who confined their world into the wall of their own introversion.

However, to be a good writer, you don’t have to be introverted or aloof, just enjoy your writing and when finished,  give it a good visual check to ensure correctness of sentences in terms of grammar and syntax.

And, do not forget to read this:

The size of your dream determines the size of your success.

If You Want To Be A Good Writer – Read A Lot

Pawan Kumar Jha

Though I can’t say this with absolute conviction, but I believe I am one of those internet users in the world who can’t leave without browsing information and quotations of great minded individuals.

Sincerely speaking, I love positive-thoughts inspiring quotations of those greatest souls whose legacy we still adore much, not because they had been meaningful and relevant to the then era of their prevalence, but also because of the fact that they still lend gravity of awesomeness and inspiration to the readers.

A good number of people in the world brought spiritual transmogrification to their life by imbibing positive thoughts.

Lately I happened to be reading a very quote by Stephen King in which he quoted as saying,

“If you want to be a (good) writer, you must do two things above others: Read a lot & Write a lot.”

Being myself a writer, this quotation of world’s one of the most renowned novelists cast its inspirational message onto me, drove me into pensiveness, and subsequently (as impressed by the message), I thought to analyze the quote according to my own discretion and understanding.

No doubt, if I want to be a good writer, a very renowned writer of someone with stature of Stephen King, it is, therefore, the greatest necessity of mine to follow wholeheartedly the underlying message of the quotation. Now, I am going to analyze in the following way just because I am feeling so intrigued to elaborate this great thought of Mr. Stephen King.

If you want to be a good writer:

Read A Lot:

Reading, to my mind, is really helpful for everyone dreaming about to become one of the best writers in the world. Our thought patterns develop in due course of time in conformity with our developing affinity with reading books, great books with worth-following lessons. 

The human mind, if not supplied with good nourishment and healthy food intakes in a routine way every day, the eventual outcome that we experience is harrowing, it stops functioning properly. In other words, the mind becomes dull that consequently affects its interpretative skill of the incoming thoughts from the sources such as life’s experience or by conversing with different people etc.

Just as good foods are vital for a mind to function properly, in similar manner a writer’s mind needs to be foddered by great thoughts in their intellectual patterns so that the interpreted ideas stand for one’s uniqueness and speak the volume of smartness, informativeness and standout.

The nature of thoughts accumulated from reading is entirely subject to the kind of books that a reader reads! Reading-generated ideas are, therefore, the cumulative process in the form of accretion in mind, which come out in the total conformity with their tonality.

So to say, the ideas accumulated out of reading are reflected in our writing. The way we sentence is the reflection of “nature” of ideas accumulated from reading.

What to Read A Lot?

Since you want to become a writer, it is therefore quite essential of you to read books that are dedicated to people who want to be a writer – that’s the first requisite you should prioritize.

However, I do not believe that a reader’s mind should be preoccupied with its own narrow-mindedness of gathering centralized ideas from the specific dedicated books. I wholeheartedly believe that ideas must be expanded beyond any dimension and should not be restricted to adherence of certain privileges/sources as the horizon of a writer’s mind must be expanded as much as possible, and this is possible only when a writer must indulge into reading a lot of books, good books with great ideas.

To read a particular book to become a writer, one must first of all prioritize one’s field of interest.

For instance, one of the fields such as sports, health, real estate, medical, finance, technical etc. must be chosen carefully so that the writer has a clear vision of their goal. Hence, a book must be chosen accordingly. To say otherwise, if you want to get a hand on technical writing prospective, reading books dedicated to technical fields or latest evolution in technical markets or related to similar ideas will be great for you.

Similarly, if you are a pious individual who wants to write spiritual posts or something on personality development in spiritual context, reading spiritual and religious books would be of great use.