There are probably as many secrets to effective writing as there are Days in the Year or Blogs on the Blogosphere. But a few key elements stand out and I would like to share a couple with you in this post.

First and foremost, since it’s difficult for most of us to even start to write anything at all then it’s essential that when you are in second gear and accelerating that you don’t pull into the nearest lay by for a coffee and a sandwich. Basically what you should do once underway is to keep going and forget the spell check, the punctuation, the grammar and paragraphs.

If you are going to be stopping and checking email every few minutes which some of us do when at the computer (coz it’s fun and you never know who will be writing to you) you sure ain’t going to get anything worthwhile completed.

Completion that is the key to any success in life; a half finished project is pretty much worthless, in fact it can give you nightmares for months. So no matter what the distractions you must finish your project and this type of laser focus will bear fruit.

Ok so you have kept writing and ideas keep flowing and flowing and flowing. The page looks a mess but you have the outline. Going for a spell check or even a visit to the bathroom can interrupt the flow and then when the phone or doorbell rings you will be sinking without a trace. How do I know this to be true? Well I wrote the book on the subject but never got round to publishing it! so there!

If like me your typing skills are a little last century, then the ideas will be coming faster than you can type so it’s vital to keep going at the keyboard. An alternative would be to record you r thoughts and then transcribe but for me the thought of having to clear the desk and get those microphone thingies all set up just creeps me out. Yes I wrote the book on being Technically Challenged but couldn’t fathom out either PDF or FTP (this is being looked at as I write!)

The first hurdle is achieved if you have 500 -750 words and garbled paragraphs on the page because now you have something to work with. As you format and spell check you will inevitably come up with new ideas which will be useful in the same or other articles so that writer’s block will never be a problem… I like to read out loud as I type and also when doing my sentence and grammatical structure

When you have done your first draft you’ll then have a much better idea of what is working and what needs modifying for your reader .You do have readers don’t you? After all this is the whole point of the exercise!

So that’s a quick how do you get started and how you prepare to finish what you have started. We’ll talk more about dealing with the second draft in the next post sometime somewhere but don’t wait up you’ll be disappointed!

Your target market will dictate to a certain extent your choice of language and this is O.K up to a point. But suppose you are trying to educate that market and move them a few rungs up the ladder to a higher understanding of your subject matter. Are you going to leave them behind if your piece takes on a different hue? What is it going to take to pen an effective contribution?

That’s a dilemma that has to be faced and perhaps a compromise is called for. Either way the time spent in crafting your article or report, needs to be justified by not just hoping for a response but aiming to achieve an objective. You may be attempting to inform in a general sense or educate in a more detailed fashion.

Start off with a focused objective and this will aid your choice of words and sentence structure.
Getting visitors to read what you have to say and come back again to your site or blog is not such an easy task to accomplish. Looking at your web site statistics will very often give you quite a shock when you discover that vast quantities of people come and go in the first 30 seconds!

Here’s an Article penned a few days ago on a subject about which the author knew very little and was preceded by 45 minutes of research.The objective was to inform about the basic facts and not drift off into dreamland with flowery verbiage! Straight forward facts and figures get to the point and provide value to a reader who wishes to gain a quick insight into the main benefits of this important Vitamin.

So here’s an approach to informing an audience with very little personal author comment added.

What are the benefits of Vitamin D?

Vitamin D is produced naturally in the body as a result of exposure to the sun. If you happen to live in the Northern Hemisphere with long dark winters then Sun is going to be absent and therefore so will your production of Vitamin D!

It is the exposure to UVB rays (short wavelengths) produced by the Sun that triggers the production of Vitamin D in the body

Vitamin D is typically found in many of the oily fish group therefore providing a readily available source for those living in Sun deprived areas either through consuming the fish directly or via a supplement.

Each sector of the population has factors that it must address in order to ensure sufficient production of this essential vitamin.

Breast fed Babies are known to be deficient in Vitamin D so therefore Health consultants recommend an additional supplement.

The over 50’s are also likely to be in need of a Vitamin D supplement since skin at that age has greater difficulty in producing the vitamin.

Post Menopausal women who are at risk of osteoporosis, a disease where bone structure deteriorates, are a group that should consider a Vitamin D supplement. This supplement will help the body to absorb the Calcium needed for healthy Bone tissue.

It was recommended that women in this group should be taking a level of 1100 Units of Vitamin D (International Units or IU) per day.

Recent medical studies have shown that people with higher levels of Vitamin D in their bodies were deemed to be at significantly less risk from Breast Cancer. Figures of between 50 and 60 per cent less likely to contract the disease were uncovered during special trials.

It was suggested that following these studies, a daily intake of 2000 Units of Vitamin D (IU) would be suitable to reduce the risk of contracting this disease.

In other scientific studies recently, it has been found that Vitamin D can be instrumental in helping blood vessel and immune system functions which can obviously improve general health standards.

The proliferation of recent scientific studies and their results give a very clear message to the population that production of substantial levels of Vitamin D is not only advisable but essential . If natural sunlight is not available, then taking a suitable supplement at recommended levels is extremely advantageous.