What’s on the iPod: Bang Bang by Dispatch
Writers: Visit me over on Jenn Mattern’s All Indie Writers blog this week for both the book giveaway and the interview.
Poets: Head over to Pink Latte Publishing to catch my interview/poem on Taye’ Foster Bradshaw’s site.
Everyone: Give Cathy Miller some love in absentia. My guest post is up on her site this week.
It’s been a busy few days. I had some work to finish up on one project, then proofreading on a second project. Today, I’ll be talking with each client and doing some edits.Also, there is an email blast I have to get to the client, so the morning will be as full as the afternoon.
I was reading a blog post yesterday and I had to stop. It’s one thing to write with SEO in mind, but when your sentences become choppy and the keywords jump out at you, it’s too much. Yet some writers (yes, this was a writing blog) don’t understand the power of creative writing. How ironic is that?
In this case, there were seven mentions of the same stilted phrase, and in just one case did it fit. Worse, there were other keywords that were equally obvious. Why? I get that we want traffic, but at the risk of losing an audience?
When we’re writing anything, keywords included, we have to be cognizant of how it looks on the page. Writing is an art and hey, we’re writers. It should be easier for us to handle an assignment without making it looks so freaking odd. Yes, keywords can be important for search engine results, but I’ve always thought that audience satisfaction ranked well above any intangible prize Google could bring. If you have an unhappy readership, you’re wasting time worrying about anything else. Remember, customer comes first.
If that were the only mistake we made, this would be a short blog post. Alas, there are enough writing issues to go around the Internet as many times as those awful, stilted, keyword sentences. Here are a few:
Wrong word, wrong punctuation. Every writer I know (myself included) has made a mistake with using the wrong word (do you still type “then” when you mean “than”?) or an apostrophe where one clearly doesn’t belong (my skin crawls when I see things like “the company and it’s employees). Know the rules. If you’re unsure if your writing contains errors, ask an editor friend to look over your stuff. Or pay attention to how other writers are using certain words or punctuation. When you see punctuation that’s opposite what you would do, look it up.
Crutch words or phrases. It’s all too easy to slip into bad habits or begin to rely on familiar phrases instead of choosing a more creative path. They call them “crutch” words or phrases. I have my own — “in fact” “Mind you”. They’re phrases we repeat in our writing to the point where someone could say “Oh, she wrote that” or “Ah, I know who Anonymous is!” Go through your writing and look for these repetitions. Knowing what they are helps you avoid them.
Extraneous wording. If you counted all the “that” words in my posts, you’d see my writing is lumped full of extra words — bullshit words as my husband’s team at work calls them. I could cut out 98 percent of these words and you’d never miss it in my writing. I would because my brain inserts it, but I’m trying to retrain myself. Only those words that enhance the work belong. What are your extraneous words?
Keyword Hell. It deserves a second mention because it’s such an easy thing to fix. Your writing should be natural, even with keywords. Your audience shouldn’t be aware that the keywords are even in there, and as writers, we’re all responsible to taking the extra time to do the job right. For example, suppose I wanted to use the phrase “writing for profit” in this post. Take one sentence: “Writing is an art…” and replace it with “Writing for profit is an art…” The natural flow is now not so smooth, is it? Maybe your keyword is the problem. If you’re not working for a client, pick a keyword phrase that’s easier to write into your post. If you are writing for a client, rephrase things so that it doesn’t sound so forced. And separate the phrases so you’re not making it obvious. You can write keywords into your work just as easily as any other parameter the client gives you. Don’t believe it? I’ve just filled this post with one particular keyword. Did you notice?
What mistakes are you seeing? What mistakes were you able to correct in your own writing?
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