Writing Techniques Articles

• Pretend, then write

Fake It! Pretend you are a world class writer

Imagine yourself as a famous writer, right now! Where do you live, what do you wear, who are your friends, what’s your work process, how do you walk and talk, what are all the aspects of your lifestyle?

Then see yourself enjoying that future - Now! Get into it and make it as real as possible.

Go full sensory - imagine it using all 5 senses.

Important: Make the images in full motion, full color and brighter and larger than life! Enjoy this and seriously... have fun doing it!

Even write it out and describe it in detail. Make it as real as possible. Then immediately begin to write from that feeling state of body/mind.

Also, You can use modeling as a system to create an accurate version of an object or action. In this case, the goal is to write in the same way that a world class writer works... how they think, what they believe, how they set up their process and the steps they follow.

Pick your favorite author. The one whose work you most admire.

Success leaves clues, so follow the clues in order to achieve excellence quickly. You copy their useful strategy and thinking. Short of spending a lot of intimate time with them in order to elicit their thinking and writing strategies, you have two useful and effective ways to model them:

One, read whatever they have written about their process and the craft of writing. Study it in detail;

Two, read all the works that they have written. Then while imagining yourself to be them, copy it out by hand. This will bring your unconscious resources to bear and work like an in depth training program in how to generate world class writing.

Your improvement is a function of how vividly you imagine yourself as them multiplied by the number of days that you hand write out 5 or more pages of one of their books.

When modeling another person the modeler suspends his or her own beliefs and adopts the structure of the physiology, language, strategies, and beliefs of the person being modeled. With writing, your most direct and accessible tool is to physically copy their writing out in your own hand. Researchers have proven that your body and mind cannot distinguish between "real" actions and the same action, vividly imagined. So by simply copying out world class writing you condition your mind that "you" are a world class writer. Cool!

After you reproduce the writing of whomever you are modeling, something happens... You will modify your own belief system while also integrating the skills of whomever you're modeling. The more you do this daily and the more vividly you imagine yourself being them, the sooner you will begin to write at higher and higher levels.

Normally a "modeling project" involves spending time watching and observing, discussing, imitating and practicing many different aspects of the subject's thoughts, feelings, beliefs and behaviors (faking it - as if the modeler is now the expert) until the modeler can produce these with some consistency and precision.

Studying their writing, especially about writing is a fruitful step. A modeling activity that works well and is accessible to everyone, is hand copying their written words out, while you vividly pretend to be them.