Be simple on your writing

Be yourself: because when you try to use a language that is too sophisticated in order for other people to see us as writers, to receive compliments from them, then you would be sacrificing your true self. The best words are those that come from your own soul.

Exercises: I can't think of anything

1.         Are you sitting looking out the window, trying to write something, but nothing comes to you? Describe the scene. The people going by. How are they dressed? What are they doing? Imagine what their work might be. Do they have problems? A couple? Etc.

2.         Describe your home, your room, your things. Give detail to everything. What memories do they bring? Who might have created them? Where have they been and with whom? If one of those things were alive, what would happen?

3.         The days when you don't know what to write. Write it on paper too, even if it's just: "I couldn't come up with anything today". Stay there for a while, an idea might come to you. Remember that you need discipline to achieve it.

Write for pleasure

Remember that writing is just one part of your life, an interest, maybe even your job, but don't identify yourself with this activity. You are already whole, supporting yourself, being a part of this world. If you achieve the results you expect, great. If you are not satisfied with your work, repeat it; but DON'T feel identified by it. Don't insult yourself, or think less of you for supposedly not achieving what you wanted. Don't give up. YOUR BEING is more than just your actions.

Sometimes we use writing as a way to get noticed, to call for attention, and for people to like us. "look what I've written. I'm a great person". But you are a good person even before you wrote one single word...

As writers, we are continuously seeking support. But before anything else, we should realize that we've had support all along. (Goldberg, 1999:95)

Practice exercise: Art in a story

1.    Pen and paper - Go to a museum, or check a book about painting. Pick a painting, the one you like the most, the one you feel identified with. Imagine a story coming out of the landscape, and of the people and objects that are present. Write it

2.    Working with dance - If you feel stressed out, dance before you start writing. Enjoy the moment. Then write about the freedom you feel when you experience something that you really enjoyed. A story might come up, maybe even a novel.

Collect dreams: create a story

1.          When we are asleep and dreaming, we often feel that we are living a different story. Sometimes we want to wake up immediately, other times we enjoy what is happening, like when we meet someone (even kissing that person, why not?), or when we living an adventure in a castle or city.

Why not take advantage of your dream and write about it? You just let them pass? You just start fresh? DON'T LET THEM GO TO WASTE. If you wake up and remember them, write them down on your notebook or personal
diary, it can be great for your stories.

PRACTICE

For a week, or better still, for a month, write down your dreams, at least those you remember. Write about them. If it's just an idea, it doesn't matter, it will come to life as you write it. Describe the characters that appear on them, and create others. Imagine them in action. They need goals and objectives, a motivation for their behavior. Describe the scene. Remember to describe the smells, sensations, and everything that you can think of. Give a meaning to your characters, their actions, and to your story.

Support or affective strategies

These strategies are not directly focused on the learning of content. These strategies' main mission is to improve the efficiency of learning, improving the conditions in which learning is done. They include:

• Establishing and maintaining motivation, focusing attention, concentrating, handling anxiety, managing time in an effective manner, etc.

Some authors relate learning strategies with a determined type of learning. For these authors, all types of learning (whether they're by association or restructuring) are linked to a series of individual strategies.

• Associative learning: PRACTICE STRATEGIES
• Restructured learning: CREATION OR ORGANIZATION STRATEGIES.

SELECTING LEARNING STRATEGIES.

The student should choose the learning strategy that's the right fit for him, using several criteria to make the right choice:

• Learning contents (type and amount): the strategy used can vary according to what needs to be learned (facts or information, concepts, etc.), and according to the amount of information that should be learned. A student who only needs to learn the first column of the periodic table can choose a practice strategy: repeating each element's name as many times as is necessary. Or, the student can choose a mnemonic rule. These strategies can be used to memorize English vocabulary (information).
• Previous knowledge about the subject matter: if the student wants to compare the different types of airplanes that exist, and if he wants to classify them, he needs to know more than just their names.
• The learning conditions (available time, motivation, eagerness to study, etc.). In general, you can say that the less time and the more extrinsic motivation to learn, the easier it is to use strategies that favor remembering information literally (like practice strategies), and it gets more difficult to use the strategies that give meaning to the information or that reorganize it (creation or organization strategies).
• The type of evaluation they're subjected to: in most educational learning, the main goal is to pass the tests. So, it's useful to know the type of exam we'll be facing. It's not the same to learn the periodic table and to apply it to solve chemical problems than learning it to remember each element's symbol or atomic structure. Evaluations promote the understanding of contents and they help students use restructured learning strategies more often.

To write is to feel free

When you focus on this activity, nothing else matters around you. For instance, if you are working on your computer, feel how your fingers slide through the keyboard as a great pianist. Dive inside the story. You live and suffer along the characters. You hear them talking to you, asking you to give them character, a personality, physical traits, and movement. Their light will illuminate you also. You feel the need to create a scene, you want something to happen... It's as if you started to unfold and live within the words. You lose sense of your physical body, and your spirit goes beyond. Do you want to experience and feel this? Is this close to how you already feel? What else can you add about your own experience?

You can't dive into the process because you think that it's useless and that nobody will like it, that people will make fun of you? Stop right there! Don't pay attention to these voices. Let them go by as if they were ghosts in your mind. Don't fight against them. If you ignore them, they will go away.

If you work with enthusiasm and from within yourself, you'll see how words flow out, and sooner than later, an entire story will come out.

In doing this, you're not only being true to yourself, you are also creating, and nothing could be more beautiful that other people feeling connected to what you write.

So don't be selfish: You have a lot to give and express, a great potential, so share your work. How can absolutely nobody be interested in it? And how do you know it will be like that? Besides, you are also VERY IMPORTANT; if writing is a pleasure for you, then why wouldn't you do it? Why would you take that away from yourself? Just doing it is rewarding in itself. It is definitely worth it.