Sunday, February 24, 2013

Top Three Ways an Essay Writing Coach Can Help Students Write Better Essays

If you are a university, college or high school student, you have probably benefited at some point in your life from having a coach - either as a member of a sports team, or as a participant in an individual sport.

No one questions the value of coaching in the world of sports, whether it is at the peewee level, or in the professional ranks. Athletic skills are developed and refined through coaching.

But what about writing skills? How are writing skills developed and refined?

If you are a student at the university, college or high school level, you may be asking yourself the same question.

How do you develop essay writing skills?

Just as with athletic skills, having an Essay Writing Coach can accelerate your development.

Here are three key ways in which an Essay Writing Coach can help you write good essays:

1) 1) Choosing an Essay Topic

Choosing an interesting, original and manageable essay topic is one of the most crucial steps in writing a successful essay. Choosing a topic that is either too broad to be covered within the parameters of your essay, or too narrow, resulting in the need to "pad" your content to achieve the required length, will doom your essay project before you have even begun. Your essay topic should not only be of interest to a reader (and your teacher or instructor) but also sufficiently focused to allow you to cover the topic adequately. An Essay Writing Coach can help you refine your essay topic so that it can be managed effectively.

2) Structuring Your Essay

One of the reasons that teachers and instructors continue to assign essays is to challenge students to think their way through a sustained presentation or argument in a logical way. Learning how to "structure" an essay is one of the most important skills that you can acquire, and also one of the most difficult. If you get your structure right, your essay will almost write itself, whereas if you get it wrong, you are almost certain to struggle. Before you begin to "write" your essay, your Essay Writing Coach can help you create a structure for your essay, which is very much like having a road map before you embark upon a journey. Knowing your destination before you begin is one of the best ways to ensure that you will arrive there.

3) Voice

Many students who don't have trouble expressing themselves aloud, freeze when it comes to writing an essay, and, as a result, their writing appears tentative and unnatural. The ability to write in a natural, confident "voice" is one of the most important skills that you can develop as a student, and one which will pay huge dividends throughout your academic career and beyond. A good Essay Writing Coach can help you develop a comfortable, consistent and natural writing style or "voice", which can be applied to any topic or subject matter. Just as in life, a confident writing style can go a long way towards achieving success.

Having an Essay Writing Coach can help you develop and refine your writing skills, which will be of enormous value, regardless of your chosen career path.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

How To Deal With Essay Writing Rejections

IF YOU want to become an essay writing expert, you must learn how to accept rejections.
Who says that seeing your teacher grade your essay with "D" is totally a bad thing? It may sound silly, but if you always get negative comments about the essays you write, you are on your way to becoming an essay writing whiz!
But there are ways to switch this negativity into positive things.

Take a break from your essay writing routines first. If the human body gets exhausted after doing strenuous physical activities, the human mind is not exempted. Writing essays is an arduous task, so it's important to take a break once in a while to "recharge batteries:" Take a walk in the woods, fill your lungs with fresh air, binge with your favorite food, talk to your family or friends, and so on.

Ask yourself some questions. Your teacher is just grading all outputs of the essay writing tasks that he or she assigns to you. So do not blame him or her if your recently-submitted essay didn't pass his or her standards. Ask yourself, "Did I really do my assignment well?," "What went wrong with my work?," etc.

Improve on the worst. If your essays are always getting rejected or your writing style doesn't make the grade, think of the worst thing that would happen: You'll get lower grades in school. Try to improve on the worst by listing possible solutions-such as "I will read a lot," "I will strive harder," "I will seek the help of an essay writing service," etc.-and then pick out the best possible solution.

Try to laugh at your essay writing mistakes. Remember that nobody's perfect, so admit the hurtful truth that you write crap, but that's only for the meantime. Laughing at your mistakes means that you can bravely recognize one of your weaknesses. But you can also be up for the challenge of doing things better. Humor is a wonderful weapon that any writer can use to his or her benefit.

"Next essay please!" The only way to flee from rejection is to do other things which are of value to you. This may have something to do with improving yourself, such as reading more books, picking up on the styles of other great writers or writing about things that you like.

"Trade" your essays. The essay writing preference of your professor is different from the taste of let's say an editor of a daily or glossy. Your essay might be horrible in the eyes of your teacher, but it might be a handsome piece of writing to others. Cliché as it may seem, but there's an opportunity for every difficulty.

Move on! Past is past. If your professor thumped the essays you recently wrote, do not dare to ask him or her why your essay didn't pass his or her standards. "Knowing the truth" behind your recently rejected work will not help.

Above all, believe in the truism that brilliant ideas surface from rejections: Instead of crying over torn-out or thrown-out essay that you previously submitted in school, take rebuffs as a wake-up call, a driving force that will get you going!

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Creative Writing Prompts

Every writer must write and write daily. To write is the writer's main job. Though this goal can sometimes be a hard to achieve since most writers normally hold a day job unrelated to their creative writing life and aspirations. And the hassle and bustle of the everyday workday can sometime be so overwhelming that being creative at the end of it is just too much to hope for. And this is where creative writing prompts come in. They help stir the creativeness and allow the writer to just concentrate on the writing.

One of the most common forms of prompts for writers is being given a set of random words that should be used in a story from which a story must spring. The second common form of writing prompts is being given a random sentence, which can either become a part of the story somehow or it can be the so-called story starter sentence. In other words, it can either be a first sentence or a sentence that must become a part of a story somehow. And the third most common form of writing prompts are picture prompts, where a story is inspired by a photo or picture of a person, a scene, an object, etc.

Every writer should spend a part of each day writing. Even if just for a little bit. Like writing for 15 minutes or writing something small like 500 words, but it should be done and creative writing prompts are, by far, the best way to achieve this goal. Because the old saying, "Practice makes perfect" holds true for writers as well.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Creative Writing Prompts - The Secret To Exploding Your Creative Writing Potential

It's easy for us as writers to get into a rut with our writing. Even if we're still writing fairly prolifically, sometimes it feels like we've become some kind of factory line conveyor belt, churning out near identical copies of the same pieces of writing.

Now because you're a highly creative and imaginative person and not a factory robot, you need more stimulation, more variation. Volume is not enough, it's also important to have the variety.

Also, as someone creative, you're keen to continually evolve and feel you're developing and moving forward. If you think you're destined to be simply rewriting the same poems, stories, songs or novels for the rest of your life, that's hardly an exciting incentive to continue, is it?

Creative writing prompts are a great tool to help you explore your creative writing potential.

In fact more than that, by using writing prompts regularly, you can explode your writing potential in all directions, many of which you never even considered trying before.

A creative writing prompt is simply a short phrase or idea that gives you a starting point for a new adventure in your writing.

Once you're off and running, the rest is up to you. The prompts provides you with that initial direction and little burst of energy to get going. Where you take it after that is completely up to you.

Without the kind of starting point a writing prompt provides, you could be sitting at a blank page for the rest of your life.

And I'm sure you know how painful and unpleasant an experience this kind of writer's block can be.

Some people have avoided using writing prompts because they don't want any help with their writing. They feel they should be creating every single part of the writing, every tiny fragment of idea, every word and syllable. Maybe this is a concern you've had too?

Creative writing prompts aren't the "cheat" that you might think they are. They're not giving you a finished piece of work served up on a platter. The creativity and the imagination comes from you.

For example, say a creative writing prompt says simply: "What passion means to me - ". Everything after those 5 words comes from your own creative mind. You may start writing about your passion for horses and end up with the outline for a new novel about a young girl's journey from riding horses bareback on her parents' farm to winning gold in a showjumping championship.

You might write about the passionate romantic memories you have from your teens, and realise that there are certain things you'd forgotten than you want to rediscover with your current partner.

Or you might write about writing itself, what it gives you that nothing else can, how it makes you feel.

Wherever you take it, it's your ideas, your memories, your creative talent and imagination that's producing the words.

Run with it, have fun and enjoy where it leads.

Start using creative writing prompts today, and you'll see too how a few words or a snatch of an idea can explode YOUR creative writing potential too...

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Custom Essay Writing - Should You Buy Essays Online?

Custom essay writing services are rampant on the web these days. Every time I turn around, it seems like there is a new website selling essays to unsuspecting college students around the world. These companies are unethical and doing their customers a major disservice.

Keep reading to find out why you should never pay money for an essay online.

Where do essay writing services get their essays? Although many of these companies would like you to believe that they are creating essays with a qualified team of writers, most of these so-called essay writing services actually outsource their writing to India and other countries. Think of it: someone in New Delhi is getting paid a few bucks an hour to write your college paper.

Why is it so bad to buy an essay that was produced in a foreign country? Besides the obvious waste of an opportunity to grow intellectually and the apparent waste of your college tuition, an essay written by a foreigner is simply not going to reflect the expectations of a college writing class in the United States.

Many custom essay writing services will also provide you with a finished document that is recycled from previously composed work for other customers. Some of these essays even get reproduced online and become easy for your instructor to catch and dismiss as simple plagiarism.

As a college writing instructor myself, I have found it very easy to identify essays that students either buy online or pay someone else to write. It is not difficult and often very obvious when it happens. I want to urge you to think twice (even three times) about making this error next time you think about skipping an assignment and finding an essay for sale on the web. Not only will you be throwing away your college education, you're also very likely to get caught!

Monday, January 21, 2013

Creative Writing Prompts - Supercharge Your Creative Writing Today Using Prompts

As a creative writer, no doubt you have the ambition and intention to write all your own work.

You want to be proud of every word you write, and know that it comes from your heart.

You want each piece you write to be as wonderful a creative expression as you know how to produce, and for it to touch, move and inspire people.

This is all fantastic, and can act as great motivation and impetus to write creatively.

But what about those times when you feel the ideas have run a little dry?

So dry in fact that you're thinking of booking a holiday to the Sahara desert for a change of climate?

Those times when you're sat at a blank page or screen wondering where the next WORD is going to come from, let alone the next complete poem, story or novel.

How motivating are these kind of ambitions and intentions in times like these?

Don't you find they can actually increase the pressure?

This expectation you've put upon yourself actually adds to the feelings of being stuck and blocked?

It's during these difficult periods you can benefit most from using creative writing prompts.

Creative writing prompts are simple techniques or sets of words that give you a starting point to write from. They give you that little spark of inspiration, that gentle push forward you need to get your creative writing flowing again.

Where your writing goes after you've set off is entirely up to you. You might use a prompt to start writing, write 1000 words then edit the last 400 or so into a new poem.

Although in this case you didn't use the content of the creative writing prompt, you couldn't have got to your own piece of poetry without having used the prompt to get there.

Having a good stock of prompts available to pull out in those barren times is invaluable.

They can not only get you moving when you've ground nearly to a complete standstill, they can also help you supercharge your creative writing to new levels.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Creative Writing Prompts - How To Use Prompts To Help Your Creative Writing Flourish

So you want to become a better creative writer? But you feel short of ideas, lacking in inspiration, and just don't know where to start your next piece of writing. You know deep down that you have a lot of potential as a writer, you enjoy writing and have written pieces in the past that you've been proud of.

But lately, the words are just not coming. What can you do?

Creative writing prompts are one of the best ways to get your creative juices flowing and unlock all that untapped potential.

A writing prompt is simply a word, phrase, picture or idea to stimulate your creativity and start you writing. Where you go with your writing after that is entirely up to you, the prompt just gives you that little push, that glimmer of inspiration you've had difficulty finding lately.

Many writers feel that using a writing prompt might be cheating or taking a short cut, and means you're not producing work that's all yours. Remember, the prompt is just a starting point. YOUR unique creativity does the rest.

Think of using writing prompts like this:

Imagine there's a huge wonderful garden, every last square inch heaving with the most gorgeous and bountiful blooms. There are many different areas within that garden, each with their own theme and design.

For example, there's the Victorian English garden, the dense tropical Amazonian rainforests, the Dutch tulip fields of every colour imaginable, and the sweeping majesty of the undiscovered Alaska. If you looked hard enough, you'd probably even find the hanging gardens of Babylon!

It's a big garden! Infinitely big in fact.

All around this glorious garden is a 20 foot high brick wall, with a gate every few metres or so. You can just about see enough through the gates to know there's plenty to be explored inside, but they're all locked and there seems no way of opening them.

Then, you realise, just beside each gate is a little red box. You open the box and inside is a key. The key for the gate, the key to entering this incredible garden. You take the key, open the gate, and you're in, off on your adventure...

So, how does this relate to writing prompts and being afraid to use them because they're not all your own, or because you feel you're cheating?

A creative writing prompt is the key to the garden. It's not the actual garden.

The garden is already within you. It's all the amazing, rich and emotive stories, poems, songs and novels you haven't yet written but are perfectly capable of writing. Use a creative writing prompt, take the key that's been offered, and start to explore that wonderful creative garden within you... You, and your future audience, deserve to experience that garden in its fullest bloom...