6 Cool Ways to Overcome Writer’s Block

Want to write a bestselling novel? Or maybe you’re more the screenplay type who wants to go straight to Hollywood. Whatever your writing goals are, sometimes the biggest obstacle between them and you is a nasty case of writer’s block. How can you free up your creative juices and write a story worth telling? Here are some ideas to get you started.

Go Wild for Words

Stephen King holds thesauruses (thesauri for you prescriptive Latin-lovers) in disdain, but don’t be afraid to rebel against his viewpoint. Learning new and archaic words can help you think from a different angle; those new words can serve as the seed for your story.

One way to approach this is to find a word you like and write it in the center of a piece of paper. Use word association to create an entire web on that paper; you might be pleasantly surprised at where your thoughts take you.

Foreign language words might also give you a nudge in the right direction. For example, German has a word that refers specifically to the “glad it wasn’t me” attitude that some people take up when something bad happens to someone else. Chinese has a word that literally means “horse horse tiger tiger” and means “so-so.”

Collaborate

Sometimes writers go too deep into the “me zone” and end up isolated. Whether you get in touch with fellow writers online, on campus, or in a local writing group, your peers might be able to give you the boost that you need. Listen to their ideas and contribute your own; you’ll come up with something that neither of you could have concocted on your own. Collaborative writing is a challenge, but the rewards can be beautiful.

Check out some information on Grammarly’s annual collaborative novel, GrammoWriMo, here.

Write Poorly

Grammarly is all about helping you to improve your writing, but bad writing also has its benefits. Bad writing isn’t constrained by your inner editor’s madness. When you accept that you’re not at your best, the words flow freely. Sure, you might throw away what you work on, but you’ll have a fresh mindset.

NaNoWriMo is a fantastic opportunity to write poorly. Writing 50,000 words in 30 days is tough, but if you commit yourself to the goal, you’ll end up with something you can take pride in—even if it needs a major rewrite to make it presentable.

Play Games

There are endless games out there that can stimulate your thinking and get you into story mode. You can participate in interactive creative writing games online, or you can just sit down with some Mad Libs and see what happens. Board games are a good way to get you thinking, too. Games like Scrabble, Quelf, and Cranium will have you thinking about words—and perhaps the world in general—in a different light.

Go to Boot Camp

Writing boot camps are structured events wherein there is designated time to write and be productive. There may also be lectures and other encouragement. Participating in a boot camp can help you become more goal-oriented in your writing. The people you meet at a camp will inspire you to stay focused on improving your storytelling skills.

Veg Out With Media

Steal some ideas! Watch movies and TV shows, dive into a new book, or look at photography and other artwork. Pick out the elements that touch you and adapt them; make them your own in your next project. If you’re really in love with a particular book or show, you might even try your hand at fan fiction just for the fun of it.

Sometimes words might pour out of you like water out of a broken faucet. At other times, you might feel like you need to call a plumber to come unclog the pipes. When the latter happens, use the above tips to find inspiration for your writing and get the ideas flowing. Do you have any special techniques you use to give your storytelling a kick?

Good Grammar Can Keep You Out of Trouble. Here’s How.

We’ve all heard the bad grammar horror stories: gory rumors of a brilliant job candidate missing out on an opportunity because of a misplaced comma or frighteningly funny-not-funny tales of a political candidate mangling a perfectly good one-liner (making it mean even less than it did originally).

Then, of course, there’s the seemingly never-ending barrage of listicles recounting the 10 Most Hilarious Grammar Mistakes You Have To See Before You Die or waxing lyrical about #Grammarfails That Only Grammar Lovers Will Understand.

Rarer, though, are noble accounts of grammar saves: those times when knowing your grammar has neutralized a dangerous (if not quite near-death) experience that could have cost you your money, reputation, and love life.

This may sound far-fetched. After all, good grammar’s usual MO is that it’s a tool for improving communication and writing skills, which can have all kinds of awesome (but not superhero-level) consequences.

To prove the point, we found some pretty cool situations where grammar has swooped in and rescued a poor damsel or dude (or company) in distress.

Good Grammar Can Keep You Out of the Can

When Ohio resident Andrea Cammelleri received a parking ticket for leaving her pickup truck parked in an area for more than twenty-four hours, she could have paid it without question, pleaded her case before a judge, or even (if she was feeling particularly irresponsible) ignored it until she was held in contempt of court and thrown in jail.

Instead, she called Grammar Man! Or rather, she just relied on her knowledge of punctuation to point out that based on comma placement, her vehicle was not in violation of the law. Here are the autos that the village of West Jefferson would not allow to be parked for more than a day:

“Any motor vehicle camper, trailer, farm implement and/or non-motorized vehicle.”

As she so astutely argued, her motor vehicle was not the same thing as a motor vehicle camper. The prosecutors rebutted that the law was clear enough thanks to context, but the appeals court sided with Cammelleri and advised lawmakers to revise the sentence to include a comma between vehicle and camper if they wanted it to apply to standard autos too.

Grammar, one; city of West Jefferson, zero!

Good Grammar Can Save You a Million Bucks

If you’re not so easily won over by a mere parking ticket victory, perhaps you’ll be more convinced of the power of good grammar when there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

That was the case for Canadian telephone company Bell Aliant, and they came out of things one million Canadian dollars richer. How? Thanks to one tiny comma, they were able to cancel a contract with the country’s largest television cable provider just a year after signing (instead of after five, as the cable company intended). An unanticipated increase in third-party usage fees meant that Bell Aliant would have lost a lot of money by staying in the contract. Here’s the phrase responsible for their good fortune:

“This agreement shall be effective from the date it is made and shall continue in force for a period of five (5) years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five (5) year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.”

Bell Aliant argued that the comma after terms and before unless applied to the entirety of the sentence, which meant the company could cut ties after as little as twelve months. The cable provider, on the other hand, meant for the termination period to apply only to the clause and thereafter for successive five-year terms.

A regulator supported Bell Aliant’s claim and sent the cable mogul back to Toronto with its tail between its legs.

Good Grammar Can Get You Out of Dating Trouble

Turns out it’s not who you’re wearing or what you drive that can make you more successful on the dating scene; it’s your grasp of grammar (well, that and good teeth).

According to an online survey of nearly 5,500 singles over the age of 21, 55 percent of men and 69 percent of women judge their potential partners on how well they can cross their t’s and dot their i’s. Good grammar trumped clothes, hair, accent, and even brand of electronic device as an essential.

Needless to say, if you don’t want to strike out on the relationship front, it’s worth brushing up on your sentence structure, vocabulary, and writing skills.

Know another cool example where grammar was used as a superpower? Tell us about it in the comment feed below or via our Facebook or Twitter pages.

How to Avoid Overusing Adverbs

Overuse of adverbs

The boy ran really fast to catch the runaway ball.

The boy sprinted to catch the runaway ball.

Adverbs—those words that often end in -ly—modify verbs. They’re okay once in a while, but in excess they’re an indicator of weak verb choices. In our example, the adverb “really fast” modifies the verb “ran.” But does “really fast” paint a more vivid word-picture for the reader? Use a juicier verb like “sprinted” instead.

What Does Bff Mean?

• Bff is an initialism of the phrase best friends forever.
• Bff has evolved into a noun that refers to a close friend.

---

Being someone’s bff does not mean you’re part of a club with only two members. It does, however, mean that you have a very close friend.

The Meaning of Bff

Bff is an initialism of the phrase best friend(s) forever, and it’s a term of endearment used for selected close friends. It’s been in use since at least 1996, although the concept of having a “best friend” predates the phrase.

How to Use Bff

Bff is mostly used by younger people, especially girls, in informal communication. Bff can be written in uppercase and in lowercase letters, and since it’s usually not used in formal communication, you can write it either way. If you have to use it in formal communication, however, you should remember to pick one of the two capitalization options and use it consistently.

Examples

Janelle and I became bffs after our families went on a vacation together.

We were bffs in high school, but we drifted apart when we went to college.

Dude, we’re like bffs!

Separate vs. Seperate

Along with loose and definitely, separate is one of the most commonly misspelled words in the English language. Separate can be an adjective or a verb. As an adjective, it means set apart, distinct, or not related. As a verb, it means to to set apart, to distinguish, or to divide. Separate is often misspelled as seperate, a word that has no meaning and is simply a misspelling:

They took two separate rooms.

They took two seperate rooms.

It took time to separate the dog from its favorite toy.

It took time to seperate the dog from its favorite toy.

Words related to separate, such as separately, separated, and separation, are often misspelled in the same fashion by turning the first a into an e:

They didn’t want to go to the party separately.

They didn’t want to go to the party seperately.

They remained best friends even though they were separated by war.

They remained best friends even though they were seperated by war.

How to Remember the Correct Spelling of Separate

There are a couple of ways to remember the correct spelling of separate. You can remember that the order of the vowels in the word is symmetrical: e-a-a-e. It might be easier to remember that there’s a rat in separate (sep-A-RAT-e).

Examples

Annapolis police recovered two handguns in separate incidents over the past few days.

The Baltimore Sun

One, they would get a separate queue at bank branches, along with differently abled persons.

The Times of India

On Thursday, Duterte sparked alarm by threatening to separate with the U.S. and ally instead with China.

CNBC

It was a hug nearly five decades in the making as two sisters separated by the Sixties Scoop reunited in Winnipeg on Tuesday.

CBC News

Stop saying St. Patty’s Day!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! While you’re drinking green beer and counting shamrock leaves, you might end up debating a popular St. Patrick’s Day question: is it St. Patty’s Day or St. Paddy’s Day?

It’s easy to think that Patrick ought to be shortened to “Patty.” The name contains a T rather than a D, after all. However, “Paddy” comes from the Irish name Padraig, which is the reason St. Paddy’s Day is spelled with a D instead of a T.

The “Patty” vs. “Paddy” debate is so hot that there’s even a website and Twitter account dedicated to promoting the correct spelling.

Cheers to knowing the correct spelling of St. Paddy’s Day! We’ll tackle the meaning of Erin go bragh another time.

5 Things Admissions Officers Look For in an Application Essay

By David at EssaysCoach.com

Within your college application, your personal statement is your one opportunity for the admissions officer to “meet you”, to visualize the person behind the numbers. While no essay can save an unqualified application, an outstanding essay can push an otherwise mediocre application into the “yes” pile.

However, writing a good application essay is hard. Many students write essays that are too cliché or too shallow; others write essays that are impersonal and uninformative; some are even unfortunate enough to write essays that cause their own rejection.

This isn’t surprising. The application essay is drastically different from the typical high school assignment—deeply personal, rather than merely informative.

Well, let me give you a glimpse through the eyes of an admissions officer. Working for the admissions office of a university with single-digit admission rates, I have reviewed numerous applications and “graded” a wide variety of application essays. Here are five things a college admissions officer looks for:

1) Can the applicant write?

The first thing the application essay does is to prove that you can write well. In college, you are going to write, write, write and write—and the application essay allows the admission officer to judge whether you will be able to cope.

On a structural level, your essay should be well organized and coherent. It should have a well-thought-out idea development and be properly paragraphed.

Your writing should be engaging and expressive. A big part of this depends on your personal style, but in general, you should use the active voice and vary your sentence structures. A note though: essays on both ends of the extreme usually don’t work—essays which are too gimmicky and stylized, or too academic, rigid and formal.

Lastly, of course, your essay should be free of grammar and spelling mistakes.

2) What does the essay say about the applicant?

This seems like an obvious point, but many applicants end up writing essays that do not actually shed much light on themselves. No matter how beautiful your descriptions are or how emotionally moving your content is, if you do not relate these thoughts back to yourself as an individual, your essay will be ineffective.

A strong application essay allows us to visualize the applicant behind the numbers and to know exactly what type of person you are. The essay should make us feel that we have gotten to know you on a personal level, as if we have met you face-to-face.

3) Are there deep, personal reflections?

To allow the admissions officer to get to know you, your writing needs to include reflections that are deep and personal. Without these reflections, an essay will seem shallow or even generic. Conversely, mature reflections will bring personality and depth to a topic that might seem commonplace at first (for example, community service).

To put it another way, the most important thing in the essay is not the “what” but the “why”. We have the “what” from the list of your extracurriculars, scores and awards. We now want to know the “why”, the motivations that drive you.

This is also why it is a bad idea to try to cover too much in your essay. To put it yet another way, while the other sections of your application focus on describing the breadth of your activities, in your personal statement, you should aim to reveal depth in one area.

4) What will the applicant bring to the community?

So what should you highlight about yourself? Well, the admission officer wants to discover what you can contribute to the college. If your application allows the reader to visualize you as an active, contributing and successful member of the community, you are in.

This does not mean that you need to be mind-blowingly unique. The qualities you can most effectively highlight are the genuine ones. A good essay requires a good deal of introspection—to arrive at a keen self-knowledge of what your strong points are and how to best portray them.

On the flip side, you should avoid topics (and writing tone) that portrays you in a negative light. Be careful of writing about failures that highlight negative characteristics. Stay away from more controversial and potentially offensive topics. Avoid sounding naïve, lacking in self-awareness, or patronizing (a major problem, especially in essays about community service).

5) Do the qualities represented in the essay resonate with the rest of the application?

The advice goes that you should not rehash the rest of your application in your essay. For example, if you have already included multiple debate activities and awards, your essay should not be about debate.

The caveat to this is that while the specific activities should vary, there should be a consistent portrayal of personal qualities. If your essay represents you as a boundary-pushing activist, but the other parts of your application portray you as respectful and soft-spoken, flags will be raised.

An application is a lens into a single person, so consistency is important. You should thus consider your application holistically, and put some thought into how you want to represent yourself and what characteristics you want to highlight. Good luck!

 

---

EssaysCoach offers detailed and comprehensive application essay coaching from an admissions officer’s perspective. Visit www.essayscoach.com to learn more about how to write outstanding application essays.