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How To Write Better Articles In Your Sleep

By Steve Shaw

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 26Feb2009 Word count: 757 Viewed: 198 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Would you believe that possibly the number one thing you could do to improve the quality of your articles requires absolutely no effort on your part?

I know what you're thinking: "What? How can I receive a benefit from doing nothing?"

I don't blame you for doubting--we all like to believe that by simply sitting down to write and focusing our attention on the task at hand that we'll be able to write a great article, but that's actually not true.

You see, after you've been looking at your article for an extended length of time, reading over and over it as you craft each sentence and paragraph, at a certain point you lose the ability to see your article as it truly is.

Our brains are fascinating--with each time you re-read your article, your brain fills in information that it thinks should be there. So, you may have a word missing in a sentence, but you don't realize it. Or you may have an embarrassing typo in your title, but you're so used to seeing the title that you perceive it to look just fine.

Even if your article reads just fine to you immediately after you've finished the last line, there are likely at least a few spelling and/or grammar errors that you'll definitely want to correct before sending your article off to the publishers.

What's the solution?

Give your article a resting period of at least 24 hours.

That's right--just put your article away and clear it from your mind.

Then, when you come back to your article the next day, it's like you're seeing it for the first time. You'll be seeing your article as an objective reader would see it, and you'll likely be appalled at how many errors you notice.

And here's another trick--try reading your article backwards. In other words, look at your final paragraph and read the last sentence in that paragraph, then the 2nd to last sentence, and so on until you finish reading the article.

Obviously you're not reading for comprehension of the entire piece when you're reading it backwards, but you are rather combing for any grammar or spelling errors.

Reading your article backwards is another way to detach your mind from what you are expecting to read. By reading your article out of order, your mind is much less likely to start filling in words and overlooking errors.

Even if you don't notice any errors, there are likely some small changes that you'll choose to make to render the article more reader friendly, like breaking up a particularly large paragraph, or adding a sentence to make an idea more clear.

Why is it so important to take your time when you're submitting articles for Article Marketing?

I know that after we've written our articles that we're eager to get them submitted. The side of us that loves immediate gratification urges us towards just getting the article out there ASAP!

One thing you need to remember is that publishing articles is much different than publishing any other type of online content.

If you put up a blog post and later discover you have a typo, it's not a big deal--you can just quickly go in and edit the post. If you have a grammatical error on your website, you can just make the correction-- problem solved.

But with article marketing once you put your article on an article directory, people will be viewing your article and republishing it on their websites. These are websites that are out of your control, and if you spot a typo after folks have already started putting the article on their websites, then there's not much you can do.

Yes, you could try to contact the publisher and see if he would be kind enough to make the change for you, but that can be a big task depending on how many people have already published your article.

A better idea is to implement a mandatory article resting period. That's what professional writers do, and it will pay off in an improvement in article quality.

So, work very hard to write an excellent and thought provoking article, and then take a nap. Seriously, step away from your article--put it totally out of your mind. Then come back to it 24 hours later, and you'll see things you never noticed before.

By taking this extra step (which actually requires no effort at all, aside from a little delayed gratification), you'll start submitting higher quality articles.

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