Editor’s Picks — Top 10: What Is Your Turnaround Time?
Read the fascinating stories of these top 10 writers
How quickly do you complete your article, and how long you take to decide your next story? What can you do to speed up your writing process? In other words, what is your turnaround time?
To succeed as a writer, you have to be prolific. You have to improve your decision-making process and speed it up.
“You can always go faster than you think you can.” ~ Meg Whitman, President and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise
One way to improve your turnaround time is to note down the time:
- when you start writing
- when you finish writing
- when you decide your next story and
- when you start writing the new story
Always record the number of words in a story. Shorter stories may take less time to finish though it’s not necessary. Create a chart and enter the time you spend from starting one piece to the start of the next.
“Speed is the new currency of business.” ~Marc. R. Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce
After you finish a story, don’t waste time. You can be more prolific if you start writing the next article immediately. You may be wasting your time — like me — doing other activities after you finish a story:
- You start watching a Netflix show
- You begin checking the stats for your previous stories
- A YouTube video notification becomes irresistible
- You watch a Ted Talk, but then you click on four more
- You start an argument with your spouse
- Whatsapp groups grab your attention
One good thing that can happen — if you start noting the exact time — is: you stop wasting your time.
Your writing hours should always be the same. Protect your writing time. Think of it as a sacred time of the day. If you are like me, you may write better in the mornings than in the evenings. Your writing time should be free of all distractions — including you disturbing yourself. Don’t multitask while you are writing your story. Stay focused.
When you finish writing your story, try to start the next one immediately. Create a mindmap, brainstorm, and write notes. If you don’t already have software to help you, download the Wavemaker — it’s free. Once you have a mental image of what you are going to write, then take a five-minute break.
After your five-minute break, forget the story you wrote and start chasing your next masterpiece. If your typing speed is slow, use Google Translate’s speech to text feature to write your first draft.
These steps may seem insignificant now. But later, when you become a prolific writer, you’d look back and see how you made little changes to reach your writing goals.
These are the writers who made it to the top 10 today. Read their stories without skimming and skipping, please:
10. What a Caged Lion Can Teach You About Freedom
Dayton Parks wants to inspire you. His style is simple yet full of suspense. Don’t miss this excellent story.
Lions are among the most popular zoo exhibits. As a child, I loved going to the zoo. I wanted to see these enormous creatures lounging in the sun. And sometimes I was lucky enough to hear one roar. It was exciting. They’re called the king of beasts for a reason.
Visiting a zoo’s lion enclosure is exciting for children and adults. But there are downsides for the lions.
9. Making Recreational Activities Possible In COVID-19
Aditya Gupta’s story explores how the pandemic has affected our fun activities.
Despite the differences caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic, there’s still loads of fun to be had. In fact, seeking out entertaining activities are even more important now. Doing something you enjoy can mislead you from problems and help you cope with life’s challenges.
When activities are near where you live and allow an excess of space between you and others, outside activities pose a lower risk of spread of the COVID-19 virus than indoor activities do. Depending on the climate where you live, various activities may be possible.
8. How Did Amazing Tiny Structures Called Plastids Help Make Plants and People Possible?
Rich Sobel writes about fascinating creatures and biological issues that affect our lives. This excellent story explains how evolution is not a linear process. Don’t miss this one if you like science.
What do you really know about how evolution produced creatures like the giant California Redwoods, or whales, elephants and humans?
What if I told you it all came about in no small part due to some tiny microscopic structures that are found inside one particular kind of cell?
And that these tiny structures are organelles called plastids.
7. Apple’s Search Engine: What Would it Look Like?
Sanjith Katta likes to write about tech. His writing style is full of energy and enthusiasm. In this wonderful story, he is exploring the form of an Apple search engine.
Apple already has a search engine.
When you use the Spotlight search on the iPhone or macOS, you are technically asking your device to run through an index on your phone and return with results matching your query.
That’s exactly what a search engine does, except for every website, tweet, and image on the Internet.
6. 5 Actions You Can Take To Add New Positive Influences Into Your Life
Rob Cyrier is an excellent writer and a family man. He loves technology. But in this great article, he is telling us to mend our ways. Don’t miss this one.
When you make an effort to live your life more consciously, you start noticing things are literally sucking the life right out of you.
You wake up out of your subconscious slumber, take a look around, and wonder how in the world you got yourself into certain situations.
5. Mixed Signals and Quirky Body Language
Gayle Kurtzer-Meyers is a positive thinking freelance writer. She is a wonderful writer. If you read this story, you’ll probably check her other work and then you’ll become her lifelong fan.
Our body language plays a larger role in our communication with others than we think. Here’s how you might unknowingly be giving off mixed signals.
“I can do everything with my language but not with my body. What I hide by my language, my body utters. I can deliberately mold my message, not my voice. By my voice, whatever it says, the other will recognize “that something is wrong with me.” I am a liar (by preterition), not an actor. My body is a stubborn child, my language is a very civilized adult…”
4. No, Your Mind Can’t Be Uploaded to a Computer
Paul Thomas Zenki loves to mix neuroscience, Buddhism, physics, and literature. His writing style is relaxed, informal, and engaging. In this great article, he is answering a question all of us are interested to know. Don’t miss this one.
Like the song says, “everyone wants to be on a postage stamp, but nobody wants to die.”
And lately, one of the hottest topics for those who’d like to keep the party going forever is mind uploading, the notion that we can transfer our consciousness to machines. But like all immortality schemes that have come before it, there are fatal flaws in the plan.
3. Calling Time of Death is Hard
Ruby Melone is a superb writer. Her sad story tells us about the challenges the medical professionals face daily.
It’s a very average morning on a very average ICU in a very average hospital, somewhere in Germany. While the rest of the world might be under the impression, that the infection with the Corona Virus is the only life-threatening disease these days, that’s of course not true.
On our ward, people are suffering from cancer, hepatitis, autoimmune diseases, and more.
While the new virus is overshadowing the year 2020, other sicknesses have not stopped.
2. When White Privilege Shows You White Lives Matter More
Rebecca Stevens A. is an excellent writer. Her style is direct and compelling. If you read her stories, you’ll learn a lot about writing well. Notice how she grabs your attention right from the start.
I once worked for a company that regularly sent me on missions to Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Both countries are in Africa and were considered high risk in terms of the rampant kidnappings of foreign nationals. It was company policy to have a robust security detail to visit these countries.
One year, my white colleague Fred and I traveled to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo to set up a public health program. It was a three-day trip and the security company was charging us a fortune to escort us around the city.
1. The Easiest Buddhist Practice To Hammer Down Stress and Anxiety
At number one, it’s Sebastian Purcell, Ph.D. He is a philosopher and a happiness researcher. His style is friendly, focused, and compelling. You should check his other work if you like this one. Brilliance shines through his pieces, from start to end.
Buddhism offers a toolbox of practices for living well. You have probably heard about breath meditation (ānāpānasmṛti), for example. But have you heard of “changing the peg?”
While breath meditation is focused on uniting your conscious mind with an awareness of your own body, changing the peg is focused on altering the process of your thoughts themselves.
My practical purpose in this essay is to explain what this practice is and how to use it.
Final Thoughts
If your story was selected as one of the Top 10, please share another one of your stories in the comments with a brief introduction and a short review that can convince a reader to read your piece. (Please write the review in the third person and start it with your name.)
I must have missed something today. I cannot read every story on Illumination and Illumination-Curated. Dr Mehmet Yildiz, the Chief Editor and Founder of Illumination and Illumination-Curated, read, highlighted, and applauded every good story when he started his publications. He still reads almost all of the good ones. I try — and fail daily — to read all of the masterpieces.
Dr Mehmet Yildiz has kindly allowed our top 10 series a full shelf on the front page of Illumination-Curated and Illumination:
So, help me. Help me to find and rank the best work of the writers of Illumination and Illumination-Curated.
If you think you are an excellent writer, leave a link to your best work in the comments.
Happy reading.
You can read my curated stories here.
Note: The heading came from Geoffry Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1387–1400): “Turn over the leef and chese another tale.”
