Copyright © 2006 Ed Bagley

 All speakers and writers who become great speakers and writers have two needs.

To be a great speaker you need to have:

1) a real and valuable knowledge of the subject you are addressing, and

2) a burning desire to share what you have to offer with others.

To be a great writer you need to have:

1) a real and valuable knowledge about the topic you are writing about, and

2) a burning desire to share what you have to offer with others.

In other words, be a good storyteller so people will listen to or read your stories.

We all must begin where we are at, whether we think we can become an Internet articles writer or not.

So what exactly is good writing? The best writing glides along the ice like a speed skater in a 1,500-meter race. You ride on his effortless stride, you marvel at his form, you feel his intensity and sense of controlled urgency, you appreciate his sense of competitiveness, you find yourself with him, stride for stride, measuring his distance from the leader of the pack, wondering if he can actually win, suddenly you lose control and jump into the race, you lean as he leans going around the curve, you wonder if he has what it takes to close the gap, your attention becomes riveted as he begins to narrow the margin, your heartbeat increases as he gains ground, you are glued to the moment, and then he puts on a final sprint, finally draws even, and wins by the blink of an eyelash! My God, you were there. When he mounts the awards stand and the flag of his nation rises, you rise with it. He was your choice, and he won!

Is it any wonder that athletes have such a strong following among spectators? Athletes become our heroes in any vicarious way possible. We wear a jersey when we watch the game. After the game, we play a pick-up game with our kids in the back yard. We love the feel of being in the thick of the competition, and winning.

Switching back to our main topic, what exactly is good writing?

Some people think a good sentence should be short and simple.

To the point.

Obvious.

In the first example above, the sentence goes on and on and on (168 words!), and yet you kept reading.

Writing can be either way and be effective, and there are Pulitzer Prize winners to prove it. For simple writing with short sentences, read Ernest Hemingway’s "The Old Man and the Sea." Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature. For sentences that go on and on and on forever, read William Faulkner’s "The Sound and the Fury," it is filled with long, convoluted sentences. Nonetheless, Faulkner, like Hemingway, also won the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature. Both were legendary novelists with opposite writing styles, and therein lies the easiest way to become an articles writer.

What is important is developing a style of writing that you are comfortable with. Even more important is getting your thoughts, some thoughts, any thoughts, onto your monitor. Until you put the letters on your keyboard onto your monitor, you are not a writer. The moment you do you have the potential to become an articles writer.

Once you have a sentence, any sentence, in front of you, you can pick it apart and make it better, because you have taken the thought out of your head and put it into the workplace of improvement. Write something on your monitor and it becomes manageable; try to formulate the perfect sentence in your head before you put it on your monitor, and your article may never get written.

The frustration of trying to write the perfect sentence brings on writer’s block, the inability to put your thoughts into meaningful sentences. Forget about being an articles writer, just get started and you will become one.

Go ahead, start. Begin now. Write anything down, and then make it better.

You are now on your way to becoming an Internet articles writer.

(You can voice your opinion on any of my articles, including this one, just click on this link: <edbagley@comcast.net>.