Writing articles for an ezine, newsletter or as content for your web site can often be a daunting prospect. There you sit, looking at a blank page and saying to yourself "Where do I start?".
The first step is easy. Don't start with a blank page - try using a graphic organizer instead.
The article you plan to write is probably an informative one, giving your reader relevant facts about your idea, product, service or company. All you have to do is organize your information in such a way that the article develops naturally and without any conscious effort on your part.
This is where a graphic organizer can help you.
What is a graphic organizer? Despite the technical-sounding name, you probably use one every day - your calendar! Your calendar is a set of boxes by which you 'organize' your daily life. Now, supposing you had a graphic organizer to 'organize' the way you write your articles? How much easier would that be?
Just like your calendar, graphic organizers can be paper-based or computer-based.
Paper-based organizers can be drawn up quickly using your ruler, pencil and eraser. Computer-based organizers can be created using your word processor template features or by inexpensive whiteboard software, like NotateIt for example, that has been developed especially for the purpose.
Whiteboard software gives you amazing flexibility when you're preparing your articles. The graphic organizer layout acts as a background and, over the top of that, you add snippets of text, images or even movies to the 'board' to build up all the relevant information. Then, you can move them all around, just like Post-It notes, to organize your ideas.
Have you found that research can take up a lot of your time when you're writing articles?
Here's a tip. Don't do your research first - do it when you know what answers you need. By using a graphic organizer to determine what you know and what you need to find out, you'll save whole heaps of time.
So, when you need to classify and organize information for your articles, try using a graphic organizer to build your framework for success.
(c) 2005 Lynda Blake All Rights Reserved
About the author:
Lynda Blake is a UK freelance writer
Resources used in preparing this article:
Whiteboard Software: http://www.notateit.com
and graphic organizers
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