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Attitude towards having a strong work ethic. Learning technology comes later.I too had a similar profile: private university, non-existent programming culture. But overcoming all said challenges, I got selected for GSoC at the end of my second year.What I recommend through my personal experiences is :Getting used to working as a programmer: I knew programming before joining college, although the kind of programming I am doing right now is way different from what I had learnt in school. Due credits given to my school for making my fundamentals strong in OOPS as well as getting me used to working as a programmer. Not very hardcore stuff, I just felt that I had an upper hand over the students who weren’t familiar with programming because I had spent 2 years on learning basics vs the latter had only one semester of introduction towards programming in general.To the people who aren’t familiar with programming, don’t get scared reading the first point. I repeat, the kind of programming that got me through GSoC is way different from what I had learnt in school.It’s imperative to getting used to coding. Read about the 10,000 rule for mastering any skill.In a nutshell, be comfortable in using a computer more than the amount your average family member uses.A short list of what you can do:For basics/catching up:Attend all the lectures related to programming in your college. Don’t miss out on lab sessions where you get hands-on knowledge.Or else if you belong to the self-motivated bunch, try taking Harvard’s CS50 course.Once you get the hang of basics:If you come from a Windows background/have a Windows Laptop:Install any flavor of Linux having a LTS (Long Term Support) tag. It’s not compulsory but in my experience it’s far easier and more productive to work on a Linux machine. Most open source communities that get selected for GSoC primarily use Linux themselves. Remember, work with the right tool.I use Gnome (Ubuntu) 14.04 LTS dual booted with Windows 10.Start building a strong foundation:I have read countless failure stories, that people spent months preparing for GSoC and still couldn’t clear it. I am not trivializing their effort but you can’t just walk out of the room, even if you exert a lot of force on one of it’s wall. Try working smart, or in that analogy use the door.In my case, I actively started preparation 2 weeks before the organizations were announced and I still got in. It was easy for me as I was involved in a lot of projects by the time I started preparing for GSoC. I had already interned twice and had developed the right mix of technical and communication skills.Quantify time with motivation:Currently you have a lot of time on your hand. But not enough motivation, so start quantifying time with motivation.For eg: don’t spend hours setting up things on Windows, whereas it will take you 10 minutes to do the same thing on Linux.Don’t lose motivation early. You will run into countless error codes, you will lose patience even though you followed all the steps written in the documentation and still can’t reach the end goal.Find your interest: It’s imperative that you enjoy coding, but it’s not crucial to have hardcore programming skills for GSoC. For eg: I am a passionate designer by nature, but I enjoy coding too.The beauty of GSoC is that it enjoys considerable variety. It’s reach in terms of projects is huge. You have projects ranging from Biology, Chemistry, Hardware, Software, Web, Security, Applications, Mobile, Design, ML, AI, NLP etc with tons of different projects under one node. Go to the GSoC’s website for the past 2–3 years and spend time searching for the right project.A right project lies at the intersection of your interest + what you know + what you don’t know but you are still willing to learn on the go.Network: Since you don’t have the necessary exposure inside your college, start looking outside and find people relevant to your interest. This skill is very crucial in terms of career building too. This process can be broken down into 2 steps: Research properly → Network specifically.What I did was:I spent considerable time in researching about what GSoC is all about. What it stands for? What is the general profile of people getting selected? What skills are generally in demand? Quora has a plethora of knowledge on it. I went through all the answers that were on Quora’s GSoC thread.I focused on 2-3 repositories that I was interested in and I started reaching out to the people who were selected before:Stalk their profile out on the internet. Blogs, LinkedIn, Quora, Github etc. Do your research about the person in terms of how will he/she respond. You generally get a bird’s eye view of the personality by looking at their content.Don’t ask questions which you can readily find answers too on Google or Quora. Most of my questions were answered by reading either Quora or the blogs that the person had written.Ask very specific questions and good questions. Asking good questions is an art and it’s almost equivalent to googling effectively. Always keep a mental note that the other person is also a human, and he/she will be specifically taking time out of their own schedule to answer to your queries. Mostly when I pinged a fellow GSoC’er, our conversations generally revolved around their experience and some queries about some of my parallels drawn to their experience.Plan: By the time you have progressed with the above steps, you will know what to do. Good planning helps you map a timeline of when to do the things. Start looking at the GSoC’s timeline (it’s more or less same every year). Break the time available to you in short realistic mini goals.Communication: Though it does come under networking, IMO it’s the most important skill specifically for GSoC since the internship is remote based (and therefore this point will be the lengthiest also).You will be communicating with people belonging to different ideologies, background and time-zones. Everything, I repeat, everything hinges on how well you communicate with your mentors.Start hanging out on IRC’s, mail-clients, gitter or whatever communication the organization prefers. Some project mentors also have personal emails, but it’s generally not a good practice to communicate directly. Gain some confidence with the mentors, and you are good to. Emails in GSoC’s context are way too personal and if the mentors are replying to you, that means you are on the right track.Research well before making your first proper communication. Read and re-read the organization FAQ’s. Remember first impression counts.Know how to sell yourself. Play on your strengths and work on your weaknesses by the time GSoC arrives. Quoting my organization’s comments on the type of students that they were looking for:We trust you can fix the small bugs, but we're more interested in your approach to solving larger problems. The bigger things are more interesting to you and to us. Think about how you would spend your time this summer. What would you do to improve the project besides the small fixes? We are interested both in your technical skill, but also your holistic understanding of the project. Ultimately, we will judge your application by the thoughtfulness of your proposal.Keep reminding yourself that you are a student, and it’s okay to not know something. BTW the mentors also know that you are student and hence they are not looking for people having a lot of experience. You don’t necessarily have to know every piece of technology that your project uses. (I am currently into my third month of my GSoC project and I still know half the tech my project uses). It takes time, probably years to reach the level of your mentors.You just need to prove yourself that you are the best student for this job. Mostly (what I assume) mentors look for:You know some relevant tech related to the project. Saying I know Python will not hold much weight, but if you could demonstrate through examples say you made X project or gave a talk in Y conference, then they have validation.How much did you think about the project?How much effort did you put in to think about your proposal?Can you list down the benefits of your project?Would your project be some key feature of the project or a side project that could be implemented by somebody else?GSoC is more student oriented i.e. your persistence, previous hard work and your thoughts value much more than your current skill level.Indirectly gauge what type of the student your mentors are looking for in your communication.For eg: in my case the project required me to have a decent knowledge of AngularJs. I had spent some time learning Angular, but hadn’t had an in-depth knowledge about it.My mentor mentioned that he would like to look through code samples which involved the usage of Angular. I spent the next 2 days going through tutorials + a coding marathon till I was able to create a basic project in Angular. Tada, now me saying “I have a basic knowledge about Angular, but I will be able to learn it on the go” has some weight behind it.But that doesn’t mean, your previous hard work will not count. If I hadn’t had dabbled with projects and other technologies to the time leading to GSoC, it would have taken me an entire year just to get to the point where I could do the above.Do it right:Don’t prepare for GSoC for the sake of getting selected for it. Do it for the steep learning curve it brings towards you. The brand value, money, Google swag and goodies are just a plus not the real joy.Thank you for reading this long answer. In the end it always boil down to this:“How badly do you want it?”Cheers!

It was 2002, I was quitting my job at Microsoft, it was approaching our three-year anniversary, and I knew without a doubt that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with the woman of my dreams, Leslie. We started the process of buying a new house.Unbeknownst to her, I also set the wheels in motion for our engagement plan. My first problem was what exactly I should give her to propose with. First I considered buying a ring to surprise her with. This had a couple of problems. For one thing, I didn't trust my taste in rings. For another, she had said at one point that she didn't really want a diamond, but would prefer another stone. I thought she might have been just musing aloud, but I wasn't sure. I did not want to plunk down on the wrong rock!The next possibility was to have her tell me what kind of ring she wanted, and then surprise her with the ring at a later time. I felt like this wasn't romantic enough--I wanted to surprise her.So I thought, "What are the things that really define us as a couple?" One of the answers that came to mind was our love of traveling together. And then it clicked: Tickets. I'd surprise her with airplane tickets. But to where?For help with this conundrum, I decided to go to, of all places, a frequent flyer bulletin board, Flyertalk. I had a bunch of frequent flyer miles with United from previous excursions (and at the time UAL was threatening bankruptcy, which could wipe them out). So I asked the flyers where to find diamonds.The most intriguing reply was Antwerp. It's widely recognized as the diamond capital of the world, some of Leslie's favorite artists are there, and it's conveniently located near many of Europe's other great cities. Some of the flyertalk folks helped out immensely, even spending hours on the phone answering questions. I hashed out the details and called to book tickets to Brussels, a 25 minute train ride from Antwerp, on Oct 19 - Oct 28. The booking agent mentioned that the layover was in Chicago. And then another idea was born.I knew that the first thing Leslie would want to do after I proposed was share the news with her family. Chicago was awfully close to Madison, WI, where they all live. What if I could get them all to Chicago to surprise her? I decided to talk to my parents about it and get their opinion. To my surprise, they were planning on being in Chicago up until that weekend themselves. Then everything started coming together.I made an appointment with Fox's Gem Shop in Seattle, which came highly recommended by a friend. I explained my situation, and they happily spent nearly five hours over the course of two days teaching me about the ins and outs of diamonds, knowing full well that they wouldn't sell me any. I can't commend their helpful and knowledgeable staff highly enough. If you can't make it to Antwerp, check them out. When all was said and done, I was fully equipped to buy the most expensive piece of pencil lead of my life.Fast forward three months of intense planning. I told Leslie that we were going to visit Portland for the weekend while my parents were out of town, just to relax and spend some quality time together. The day before we left, I told her we had a problem. My mom had just been called by the Portland airport, and she left her car illegally parked. She had to move her car or it would be towed. She asked me to move it for her, so what if we just flew down to Portland?Leslie agreed. So that morning, we grabbed our bags and headed to the airport. I mentioned the night before that we should overpack, since we could stay a few extra days if we needed to.We arrived at the airport around 8 AM. We walked in the door and up to the check-in counter. I asked Leslie to set her bags down for a moment, since there was something I needed to tell her."Leslie, I have a confession. I don't have tickets for Portland. I do, however, have tickets for Antwerp, the diamond capital of the world. I'd like to buy you a ring there, if you'll have me." I got down on one knee. "Will you marry me?"Thankfully, she said, "Yes!"We hugged and kissed, euphoric. Then we went to the check-in counter. We told the clerk why we were so giggly, and he confided, "We know--everyone at the counter was watching. We thought it was the sweetest thing ever. We wanted to pull you out of line, but our boss wouldn't let us!" A minute later he said, "It was so sweet, I even saw some tourist snapping pictures of you." Leslie later mentioned that she only wished she'd thought to track down that tourist and get their contact information.We headed off to the gate for our flight. Getting on the plane, we realized that we'd been bumped to first class by the kindly desk clerk. We settled in for the trip to Chicago, and Leslie insisted on a full breakdown of the plans. I told her that I had booked a nice restaurant for dinner at 5:30, and afterwards we'd visit my grandmother in Chicago. I told her that both our parents were arranging to be by the phone at 7:30 so we could call them all after dinner, but in the mean time, we could have a few hours to enjoy the moment for ourselves. We read about Antwerp (I'd packed several travel books, as well as a mystery for her to read), and I told her about my research in shopping for diamonds.We arrived in Chicago and checked in to our hotel. Leslie was famished, and we arrived at the restaurant at 5:30 sharp. We introduced ourselves to Raphael, the Maitre 'd, who greeted me warmly. Fortunately, I had this covered--I told Leslie that I'd explained my surprise to the wait staff and they were very excited to have us there. Raphael told us that he had our reservation in the private dining area in the rear. As he led us there, Leslie noticed the huge tables set out, and commented that someone must be having a big party.Raphael led us around a corner. A chorus of shouts broke forth: "CONGRATULATIONS!" We were greeted by 30 family and friends from both sides, flow in and driven in from all over for the party.After making a full round of twenty four tearful hellos and embraces, Leslie turned to me and said, "This was the most wonderful day you could have possibly planned. Now, please tell me if you have any other surprises. My heart can't take any more."We finished dinner, talked to everyone, and crashed for the night. The next morning we were on the plane and off to Brussels.We arrived at the Brussels Sheraton to find it was located just a few minutes from the train station. They gave us a complimentary upgrade to the club level, and the room was fantastic. The next morning we set out for Antwerp. The train ride was short, and Antwerp was amazing. The first day we started on Pelikanstrasse, somewhat clueless, and looked at the "gold boxes" along the street. These were cheap, one-room diamond shops that had mostly inferior goods, and were (we later found out) known for forged certificates and, worse, fake diamonds. On the plus side, we got to see lots of big diamonds (large, highly-flawed stones were what they used to lure in the passersby) and get ourselves acquainted with the scene. We had a sumptuous lunch, and finished the day looking at diamonds in much better, more reputable shops along the main shopping drag. It was here that Leslie uttered the sweetest words I was to hear the entire trip: "Two-carat diamonds are just overdoing it a little, don't you think?"We went back to the hotel, and I prepared for our assault the next day. I had the concierge make an appointment with Joaillerie du Centre, a highly regarded local shop that was referred to me by one of the people on the Flyertalk board. They were also well spoken of by their competitors. We headed back to Antwerp, where we checked out a few more diamond shops and had fantastically elaborate tea and chocolates at Del Ray, arguably the finest chocolate purveyors in the world. Then it came time for the real business: looking at the rocks.Ludo de Clyr, the owner of Joaillerie du Centre, was absolutely fantastic to us. He brought out fifteen paper packets, each with a different diamond for us to look at, that he'd taken on consignment from the rock-cutters that morning. Each was close to our requirements; it was only a matter of picking out The One. We spent hours staring through the loupe, balancing stones on empty rings, and scrutinizing certificates.Then Leslie picked the one.We had it set temporarily as you see in this picture, in a classic white gold setting. (Leslie went on to design her own ring, which Fox's Gem Shop cast in platinum, that incorporates two small diamonds from my great-grandmother's ring). We came back the next day to pick up the stone, had the best dinner of our trip (helped along by free drinks from the delighted owner of the restaurant), and got ready for the next part of our trip.Friday, we left Belgium for Paris. Unfortunately, we arrived in the pouring rain. Even more unfortunately, the advice we got--"don't bother with reservations, such-and-such delightful hotel doesn't take them, and they always have rooms" was doubly incorrect. We wandered the streets, loaded with luggage, in the pouring rain, for a good hour before we found a hotel. We took a quick shower, though, and were good as new.We had a spectacular Paris weekend, visiting every museum we could squeeze in and feasting like kings. Finally, it was time to head back to Seattle.Leslie went out to pick up the mail and found her last surprise. The "tourist snapping pictures" was a photographer I'd hired, and she'd mailed the pictures while we were gone.That's the story of our engagement. We're getting ready for our 10-year anniversary this year.

The writer tries to move stuff from his brain into the brains of his readers, using words as his only tools. Good writing doesn't just transport ideas—it gives the reader a visceral experience, as if the writer is reaching inside his skull, grabbing fistfuls of neurons, twisting them, petting them, and sometimes crushing them.before you add the clutter, keep it simple stupidThe most basic skill a writer can have is the ability to describe things simply and clearly, which means either painting a concrete picture or making a clear argument. It also means using easy but exacting words and to-the-point syntax.For example, this sentence ..."Worrying about his sick kitten and puzzling over the situation in the Middle East, he hurried—all the while checking his watch—towards the train."... would be much clearer (though not necessarily better) as ..."He hurried towards the train, all the while checking his watch, worrying about his sick kitten, and puzzling over the situation in the Middle East."The easiest form of sentence to understand is "subject verb." The more words you cram between those two parts of speech (or before them), the tougher it is for the reader to understand. The reader wants to know who is doing what to whom. In my sentence, the "who" is "he" and the "what" is "hurried towards the train."I am not advocating prose in which every sentence (or even any sentence) follows that form. I am saying you should understand how to write that way, why it's a clear way to write, and, when you deviate from it, why you're doing so. In the above example, maybe my goal is to highlight the sick kitten and the Middle-East situation, and that's why I begin with them. Or maybe I'm trying to create tension by delaying getting-to-the-point. That's fine, as long as I understand what I'm doing.Complex phrasing, challenging words, and baroque sentence structures are all useful tools, but you should know how to use them, when to use them, and how to make do without them. Walk before you can run.lick the reader all over, soaking him with spitNext, writers should understand that it's much easier to make readers have sensory experiences than feelings or ideas. Whenever possible, writers should use that to their advantage. An essay on democracy will benefit from descriptions of flipping switches inside voting booths; and geometry texts are digestible when the reader can imagine putting on running shoes and sprinting around the circumference of a circle.As much as you can, evoke sounds, sights, tastes, touches, and smells. Punch and pinch the reader; fill his nostrils with urine or the scent of cherry pie; rub him all over with wet paper towels; tune his inner radio to cool jazz or static; sprinkle cinnamon on his tongue... Sometimes you can evoke sensations by raw description: explaining what an object or scene looks like, smells like, etc. Sometimes you can animate a non-sensual abstraction via metaphor:"She raged, accusing him of one thing after another. Each accusation was like a firecracker detonating in his sinus cavities."Humans have a sixth sense, which is just as evocative as the famous five—and I'm not talking about ESP. I'm talking about our kinetic sense, our sense of movement. Verbs that move are always strong: push, pull, kick, bend, straighten, leap, stretch, roll, amble, crouch, sprint... You can use them literally ("The penguin waddled") or figuratively ("I toppled her argument").time for show and tellWriting teachers sometimes say "show don't tell." It's not a bad heuristic for beginners, but it's oversimplified. I prefer to say, "Earn the right to tell." Telling—as in explaining rather than evoking—is harder for readers to relate to than the sorts of sensory data I outlined, above. So if you have something to tell, make sure that you've either prepped the reader by helping him picture (smell, etc.) the scene or by quickly following your telling with a sensory picture that illustrates it.The show is the setup; the tell is the punchline.The tell is the thesis; the show is the proof.Example of showing and then telling:My girlfriend kept drinking all my beer. She would hog the remote control and force me to watch hours of 'Sex in the City.' She packed my suits into boxes and filled my closets with her dresses, jackets, and sweaters. She insisted on smoking inside, and my apartment still reeks of nicotine. She was a selfish bitch, and that's why I broke up with her.The last sentence is telling, but I earned the right to tell from my earlier sentences that showed.Example of telling and then showing:Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him...This famous opening, from Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina," starts by telling and then, to anchor the idea into the reader's brain, switches to showing.You don't always need to formulaically tell first and then show or show first and then tell. What you need to do is just keep in mind that we sense easier than we understand ideas—and that we understand mostly through sensing. So by all means tell. Just make sure your telling is linked to sensations.Also, keep in mind that "showing" means evoking. If you're wondering whether "It was raining" is showing or telling, ask yourself whether or not it evokes the sensation of rain. I don't think it does, do you? Try something like "the rain soaked through his shirt, plastering it to his chest...."And keep in mind this excellent advice from novelist Chuck Palahniuk:In six seconds, you’ll hate me.But in six months, you’ll be a better writer.From this point forward – at least for the next half year – you may not use “thought” verbs. These include: Thinks, Knows, Understands, Realizes, Believes, Wants, Remembers, Imagines, Desires, and a hundred others you love to use.The list should also include: Loves and Hates.... Until some time around Christmas, you can’t write: Kenny wondered if Monica didn’t like him going out at night…”Instead, you’ll have to Un-pack that to something like: “The mornings after Kenny had stayed out, beyond the last bus, until he’d had to bum a ride or pay for a cab and got home to find Monica faking sleep, faking because she never slept that quiet, those mornings, she’d only put her own cup of coffee in the microwave. Never his.”Instead of characters knowing anything, you must now present the details that allow the reader to know them. Instead of a character wanting something, you must now describe the thing so that the reader wants it.Instead of saying: “Adam knew Gwen liked him.”You’ll have to say: “Between classes, Gwen was always leaned on his locker when he’d go to open it. She’d roll her eyes and shove off with one foot, leaving a black-heel mark on the painted metal, but she also left the smell of her perfume. The combination lock would still be warm from her ass. And the next break, Gwen would be leaned there, again.”In short, no more short-cuts. Only specific sensory detail: action, smell, taste, sound, and feeling.— http://litreactor.com/essays/chuck-palahniuk/nuts-and-bolts-%E2%80%9Cthought%E2%80%9D-verbswrite sensually and you can forget most other rulesIf you commit to evoking sights, sounds, smells, tastes, movements, and textures in the reader's brain, you can quit sweating the small stuff. For instance, you've probably heard that strong verbs and specific nouns are better than adverbs and adjectives.This isn't necessarily true, but it often turns out to be the case—not because modifiers are bad, but because it's easier to evoke sensations via concrete, easy-to-grasp objects and actions.If you write, "he looked at her quizzically," that's harder to instantly picture than, "he cocked his head" or "he furrowed his brow."Don't worry about adjectives and adverbs. Just work to evoke images and other sensations. Make your images strong and specific.the three biggiesBeginners often need to learn three things:(1) write every day;(2) read everything you write out loud;(3) and make multiple drafts.Almost every writing book makes these suggestions, but when I first started writing, I refused to follow them. Why? Because I was egotistical and lazy. I thought maybe other writers needed to write every day, but surely I didn't need to. Besides, it was too much work. And I felt the same way about reading aloud and making multiple drafts.Writing well is hard. You need to practice every day, because it's the only way you'll improve—and you can easily backslide. So you need to "practice scales," like a pianist.If you can't think of anything to write today, just describe your morning: "The alarm went off. I groaned and refused to get out of bed. But it kept ringing, so finally I threw the covers aside and stumbled to the bathroom..." It doesn't matter what you write. It doesn't have to be interesting. You don't need to show it to anyone. Just write, write, write...You don't get to call yourself a writer unless you write every day. But if you write every day, you're an official writer, even if you've never had anything published.You need to read everything you've written out loud, because that's the only way you'll know if it sounds natural. As soon as I mouth my words, I find all sorts of forced and awkward-sounding passages. (TIP: if you're at work or a coffee shop and can't read out loud, at least move your lips. It will force your brain to imagine you're reading out loud.)You have to make multiple drafts because editing is easier than writing. And you need to first get something down on paper so you have something to edit. Think of your first draft as a data dump. Then you start chiseling away at it, going over each word, adding and subtracting.Stephen King, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen ... they all work (or worked) with multiple drafts. If you're a serious writer, you need to do that, too.Every once in a while, you'll hear about an amazing writer who doesn't redraft. Yes, they exist. They are freaks of nature. Don't assume you're one of them.PS. You don't have writer's block! See Marcus Geduld's answer to How can I deal with writer's block when I have so many ideas in my head, but no way to write them down? I don't feel confident enough to write and I suppose I am not literate enough in TV and film. How can I get more confident to write?And keep in mind what Ira Glass has to say about taste (emphasis added):Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste.But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.every piece of writing countsIf you want to be a writer, you should always be "on." Give up the idea of "tossed off writing that's not real writing." Proof-read and redraft your emails, your text messages, your shopping lists. If you're a writer, you care about writing. You always care. You always take care.The flip version of this "law" is: you know you're a writer when you start proof-reading your text messages, worrying over each word—when you can no-longer conceive of not caring how you write a sentence.Do you know any professional chefs? I do. They don't say, "I know I'm a chef, but I'm just making a sandwich for a snack." They are incapable of being around food without caring. When they are around food, they care.write to somebodyIt's much easier to write to a specific person than "the general reader." Sometimes, when I'm stuck, I write in gmail instead of MS Word. I start a letter to a friend—with no intention of sending it—and start describing, storytelling, arguing or whatever.We evolved to talk to specific people, not people in general. So use that part of your nature! When you're writing, make a case to your mom; argue with your husband; write a love letter to your teddy bear... Later, you can generalize it.By the way, writing to a specific person can help you find a "voice." You will find yourself writing differently if it's an "email" to a six-year-old than if it's an email to your boss.This technique tends to work for programmers, too. It's useful in many fields. We're social animals. Understand that fact and use it to your advantage*. See Rubber duck debugging.read every day...... and when a writer gives you a strong sensation, surprises you, or makes an idea pop into focus in your brain, stop and ask, "How did he do that?"study rhetoricThe ancient Greeks formalized the study of persuasion and coined all sorts of terms for various writing structures. A well-known example is "antithesis"—the tension between opposites. For instance, let's say I'm trying to convince you to move to New York. Here's a way to do with using antithesis:"New York is a a dirty city. Gum wrappers and soda cans decorate the gutters; used condoms float in Central Park's lakes; and, at night, you'll see rats scurrying around the subway tracks; but you'll never find a city more full of life! New York will dazzle you with color and light; it will seduce you with its scents of jerk chicken, gyros, spicy corn and candied peanuts; you'll follow proud, long-legged women up Madison Avenue, and everywhere you'll grab fistfuls of money."See Rhetoric, Figure of speech, and Rhetorical device.Here's a clearly-written, inexpensive book on rhetoric for writers: Amazon.com: Rhetorical Devices: A Handbook and Activities for Student Writers eBook: Brendan McGuigan, Douglas Grudzina and Paul Moliken: Kindle Storewrite rule-based poetryWriters need to become word experts, and one of the best ways to do that is to challenge yourself with constraints, like writing in e-prime (see below) or refusing to use any word containing the letter 'e.'Whenever you constrain your prose, you should always do so with the goal of sounding natural. Can you give your e-less essay to a friend without him noticing anything odd? When you can write fluidly with constraints, you'll be able to write wonderfully without them. (I remember when my dad taught me to drive with a stick shift, telling me that I'd find automatic transmission a cinch if I mastered shifting gears, first.)The most common form of constrained writing is poetic verse. There are many forms you can try, for instance the Shakespearean sonnet. Here are its rules:1. Each line must be ten syllables long.2. You should be able to speak each line —without it sounding forced —with every other syllable (starting with the second) getting more stress than the one before it.Example: "She stood and tortured me then slammed the door.3. There must be 14 lines total.4. The rhyme scheme for the first 12 lines is ABAB, with every other line rhyming:Example:She stood and tortured me then slammed the door.I cried, "Please stop!" but she ignored my pleas.She laughed and sang and danced and laughed some more,While I unraveled, shaken, ill at ease...5. The last two lines (the final couplet) should rhyme with each other:Though cruelty was her skill and pain her art,I loved her even as she broke my heart.If sonnets are too complicated, try a simpler from, like the haiku or the limerick. Look it up on wikipedia, learn the rules, and have a go. See Category:Poetic form.And I urge all writers —no matter what form of writing they do—to read Stephen Sondheim's two books on lyric writing. They trap you in the mind of a writer who cares about each and every word he writes.Hat Box: The Collected Lyrics of Stephen Sondheim: Stephen Sondheim: 9780307957726: Amazon.com: Bookstry e-primeE-Prime, a constrained English, forbids you to use any form of the verb "to be," so instead of writing, "She was scared," you must write, "She shivered" or "She ran screaming to her mother." I spent a year writing in e-prime (always working to make my prose sound natural, despite the constraint), allowing myself to use "to be" forms only in quotes, as in this paragraph. E-prime forces you to craft every sentence around an agent doing something, e.g. a woman shivering, a dog peeing, or a bomb exploding. My e-prime year improved my writing more than any other exercise.break a ruleYou've heard teachers say, "You have to know the rules before you can break them." Okay, well: you know the rules. So now go ahead and smash them to pieces. You may not be a grammarian, but you know at least some rules of writing. Those are the ones you're allowed to break, and those are the ones you must break.Why? Because writers don't let words own or dominate them. Writers own words. Writers hypnotize nouns and order them to act like verbs; they gleefully stick square pegs in round holes; they spit in the eyes of their fifth-grade English teachers.I am not excusing shoddy, lazy work. What I am saying is this: if you don't know the rules, the words control you. If you're controlled by the rules, the words still control you. You must become the master of the words and the rules, using them as tools, not as bosses.Obviously, if you're a student and writing "ain't" will get you an F, don't do it. But in your own writing, be the boss and don't let anyone else push you around.Unless you're writing experimental poetry or prose (or colloquial dialogue), go easy on the departures from standard English. They should be the spice, not the main course. If every word is surprising, none of them are surprising. The eccentric is only effective when it's hidden within the ordinary.You don't have to keep all your experiments. You're also in control over what goes into the final draft. Just keep playing. Keep loose with language."My Lit professor assigned Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Othello, and now my brain is totally Shakespeared, and I don't know whether to be or not to be.""She ordered me to get her lunch, then she made me fix the toilet, then she told me to wash all the dishes, then she ordered me to drive her mom to the airport, then she gribbled me to grickle her grapper grouper until I smashed her head with a doodle doodle doo!"extend metaphorsIn Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explain that our writing and speech is laced with metaphors we fail to notice. For instance, here are a couple of sentences from earlier in this post:"It's much easier to write to a specific person than 'the general reader.' Sometimes, when I'm stuck, I write in gmail instead of MS Word."Note that I likened being unable to write with being physically trapped and using gmail as being inside something. Such metaphors should convince you—if you still need convincing—that we're sensual creatures: that when faced with something murky like writer's block or interacting with a computer, we evoke physical concepts, like being stuck and being inside a container.Here's a fun and useful exercise: find a passage written by yourself or someone else, locate all the buried metaphors and extend them:In my passage, in addition to "stuck" and "in," there's "writing to," which seems to evoke the idea of words traveling towards a person, as if they're birds or arrows.Here's my attempt of an extended version:"It's much easier to write to a specific person—pushing each word towards him and watching them waddle off like baby ducks—then it is writing to a general reader. Sometimes, when I'm stuck in a deep well with nothing at the bottom except blunt pencils and blank pieces of paper, I claw my way to the top, stumble out onto the grass, rush inside, open my laptop and dive into gmail, as if it was an olympic pool, and I swim frantically towards a friend or former lover."I'm not suggesting you should write this way normally. But it's a great, playful exercise that turns words into toys and makes you deeply aware of what you're writing.Turn words into toys!inspiration... The ego is the enemy of the imagination. Anything that you think about writing when you're not writing, is a product of the ego and is absolutely wrong. One hundred percent, all the time, wrong. And if you take a step back and think how much time you spend trying to purify yourself in order to get ready to write, that's like 95% of the time. And the reason for that is the ego has a stake in perpetuating the behavior that you've already engaged in. We do not think our way to right action; we act our way to right thinking.So what I do is I start writing. If I think about my writing before I start to write, what I'm really doing is justifying not writing, because ... I'm not writing. ... I'm going to find a way to keep not writing. So what I say is I don't have the idea yet; it's not fully realized yet... Not only that: I don't have pencils; my pencils are not sharpened; I don't have the right notebook. ... Whoa! Eleven-forty five already. Time for lunch.... When you think about exercising, what you invariably say to yourself is, "You know, I'm too fat. What's the point? I'm too old; I'm too fat; I'm too old; I'm too slow; I'm too this; I'm too that..." And all you're doing is justifying the fact that you're not exercising.-- David Milch, creator of "Deadwood."You can decide if Milch is going overboard or not, but in my opinion what he's saying is basically sound. The more time you waste on "Which word processor should I use?" and "outlining," the less time you are writing. And it's all about writing! Honestly, if a member of your team is stuck for ideas, tell him to write about what he had for breakfast that morning. Writing anything is a step forward.Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.-- Anton ChekhovSome films are slices of life. Mine are slices of cake.-- Alfred HitchcockStyle is the art of getting yourself out of the way, not putting yourself in it.-- David Hareif it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.-- Elmore LeonardHe was doing a film, and he explained to his writer that the beginning of the film had to show that this man had been married a long time and that he is kind of tired of it. He had gotten used to his wife and had a roving eye. So the writer brought him four pages of introductory exposition of character. Lubitsch looked at it and said, 'You don’t need all that.' He took all four pages out. 'Just put down this—the man walks into the elevator with his wife, and keeps his hat on. On the seventh floor a pretty blonde walks in, and the man takes his hat off.'-- Director Rouben Mamoulian (Love Me Tonight, The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand) remembering director Ernst Lubitsch.Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.-- TellerThere is a great difference, whether the poet seeks the particular for the sake of the general or sees the general in the particular. From the former procedure there ensues allegory, in which the particular serves only as illustration, as example of the general. The latter procedure, however, is genuinely the nature of poetry; it expresses something particular, without thinking of the general or pointing to it.-- GoethePeople are very good [at] thinking about agents. The mind is set really beautifully to think about agents. Agents have traits. Agents have behaviors. We understand agents. We form global impression of their personalities. We are really not very good at remembering sentences where the subject of the sentence is an abstract notion.-- Daniel KahnemanBegin with an individual and you find that you have created a type; begin with a type and you find that you have created — nothing.-- F. Scott FitzgeraldAnd make sure you read this: David Mamet on Dramatic Writing.* I experienced the benefit of "social thinking" today, after writing "School is a form of child abuse." I then wanted to add a sentence admitting that I'd made an over-the-top, rhetorical claim. I wanted to write, "When I say 'school is child abuse,' know I'm being _________," but I couldn't fill in the blank. The word wasn't even on the tip of my tongue. It had fallen off and was lodged somewhere under the sofa or coffee table. And my pleas to various thesauri and dictionaries proved fruitless.Finally, I called my wife, who is good with words. But I got her voice mail, so instead of explaining my problem, I hung up.Then I gave up and wrote, "I know that's a loaded phrase," which was okay, but it wasn't exactly what I intended. What was I being when I coined the loaded phrase? What's a word for someone who uses loaded phrases? Arg!An hour later, my wife called me back. She'd seen my number pop up on her phone and was curious about what I wanted and why I hadn't left a message."Oh, it's no big deal," I said. "I was trying to think of a word for ... provocative! That's it! That's what I was trying to think of! I'm being provocative! I'm a provocateur! Thanks so much! You're a life saver!""Uh ... I didn't do anything."But she did! She existed. She was a person for me to talk to, and she is an important person in my life—one that my brain is used to trying to explain things to clearly. "I'm not going to dredge up the word for you," said my brain. "But I'll do it for her!"Until I talked to her, everything had failed: straining my memory, relaxing my mind, using references materials, etc. But just the act of socializing—just the intention to socialize—made the word appear!Magic!