Last week, in my column, "Beyond the Printed Page," I gave you some writing guidelines to follow. Before we move on to the next topic, I do have a couple more points that I feel are worth stressing. Not only do you want to keep it simple, you want to keep it honest. Honesty speaks for itself in your writing; so does phoniness. Share yourself in your writing or at least as much as you feel comfortable with. In writing memoirs, in particular, don't leave yourself out of the picture and simply portray events that happened and who the people surrounding you were. As lyricist Neil Peart wrote: "…

Learning to write is not quite as simple as learning your ABCs. While creative writing is often intuitive and fueled by your imagination, there are several deliberate ways you can step up your development as a writer. Before you start to write, let's delve into the realms beyond the printed page. Reading is vital to writing. Reading as often as possible will help you to cultivate an eye for good writing. You should read fiction, non-fiction, newspapers, magazines and even the back of cereal boxes. Online you will find blogs (Web-logs) on every subject under the sun. In time you will develop …

So, you say you want to be a writer? A great way to get started is to begin journaling. Keeping a journal is a very personal way to record your thoughts, feelings and events in your life. It's also a wonderful way to improve your writing skills by practicing the craft of expressing yourself through the written word. Writing is an art form. It's similar to painting a picture, except your tools are pen and paper, or keyboard and document file, and rather than colors and textures, you use words, sentences and turns of phrase to illustrate what you want to show the reader. With time and effort …

Love them or loathe them holiday newsletters are as traditional as Aunt Minnie's annual fruitcake. In years gone by, a handwritten account of a family's year in review would be neatly tucked in with a Christmas card and it would be short and to the point. As times have changed, holiday newsletters were first photocopied, then typed on a word processor and printed out en masse, and now-a-days they are often simply e-mailed to friends and family. An interesting compromise between the time-consuming newsletters of old and the lure of succumbing to e-mails – or worse yet, a link to your blog that…

The best place to begin, invariably, is the past. Every November since 2000, a remarkable adventure is embarked upon by writers and aspiring writers from countries all over the world. This event is called "National Novel Writing Month," and it began in San Francisco in July of 1999. It started out with just 21 friends, including founder Chris Baty, who wanted to become novelists because they had nothing better to do and they thought it would help them get dates. NaNoWriMo was subsequently moved to November in the hopes that participants would be more likely to stay indoors and write during …