How To Write For Illumination And Eat Pizza
A beginners guide to writing for Illumination
You can be forgiven for thinking that a piece of writing and a pizza could not be further removed from each other. And you would be mistaken. Here's why.
Both writing and pizzas are made to be consumed, one with your mouth and the other with your eyes.
What's more, both are easier to consume piece by piece, rather than whole. That is to say, you wouldn't dream of trying to shove a complete pizza in your mouth and down your throat. So why write over-long paragraphs and expect the consumer to take it all in and digest it all in one go? It's what you might call a bit of a mouthful.
Fellow writer and editor Tree Langdon, CPA, CGA tells me she has a golden rule of writing paragraphs of no more than four or so lines. I agree. By doing this you are giving the reader time to chew over, to mentally process, what you are saying and digest it before moving onto the next savoury paragraph.
And that is not the only part of the comparison between a tasty Quattro Formaggi pizza and an article for Illumination and Illumination Curated. Let's take a look at the essential ingredients.
Of course, right here on this page I am writing this article on, you have everything you need to get started. At the top of the page we have a headline, a subheading (optional) and a photograph.
For those of you who are beginners in the Illumination kitchen, simply write your headline and sub-heading underneath. Then, place the cursor over the start of the writing, click and hold that mouse button down as you drag the cursor across the text left to right. The line will turn blue and present you with a horizontal bar of symbols.
Click on the big T for the headline and the small T for the subheading.Voila, it is done!
Now you can copy and paste your image of choice underneath the writing. The best places to find great images, which are free to use, are Unsplash, Pixabay and Pexels. Just be sure to write a caption underneath the image citing the creator (artist or photographer) and where you got the image from.
For example, Photograph by Joe Bloggs on Unsplash. Yes, you can use images from other sources, but you need to be sure that you can use them with the permission of the creator and/or source. And of course, you can use your own images, but still have to make it clear with a caption under the image that states something like
Photograph by the author Mike McMurphy, or whatever your name is.'
Now you can you can move onto the text where your story goes. Remember, try to stick to more or less four lines for each paragraph. Make a break where there is a break in your train of thought and/or language.
If you look above you will see how to get your point over, I clicked and dragged the cursor over the line and again it shaded blue and gave me some symbols. 'B' on the left is for bold, I is for italic, the chainlink is to insert links and.....
The double inverted commas are to create the effect you see here!
Or you can do this with the same symbol.
The small padlock at the end of that horizontal bar is for you to leave to a note to yourself, just in case you want to think about what you have written and want to revise it later. I hear from Tree Langdon, CPA, CGA that some writers use this to leave a message for the editor, to simply say hello, or to give a brief explanation of their piece. I think that that is a great idea.
Ok, so your article is done. Now what?
Do yourself and the editors a big favour, something that will cost you nothing to download and is easy to use. Grammarly is a great spell/punctuation checker. Yes, of course you're great writer with a very high level. So am I and Stephen King, and we use Grammarly!
Well ok, I haven't checked with Stevie boy recently(ever) but I am sure the use of Grammarly is not lost on any of the well known great writers.
Grammarly will eliminate about ninety percent of your errors. I say ninety percent because even Grammarly can get it wrong from time to time. I used the word 'wry'' and Grammarly wanted me to change it to 'way.' However, the programme did allow me to enter the word 'wry' into its dictionary.
So now all is well. What next?
Go to the three dots at the top of the page and click. The drop down menu will show a list of items. The one I want you to click on is Change display title/subtitle. Make sure what you see in the boxes are the same as your headline and subheading.
Now go to More settings on the same drop down menu and click. This will take you to another page. Here you can click, or not, to save the SEO description.
Now go back up the page to tags. Now this part is really important. Five tags pertaining to what your article is about will help to make sure it gets presented to the right audience, that's presuming you want people to read what you have written. Once your tags are saved go back to your article and click to publish.
By doing all of the above will help to ensure that your article not only gets published, but it will also help to get it published sooner rather than later. If you fail to observe any of the above, your masterpiece will get caught up in a jam whilst the editor tries to sort it out for you. And that delays everybody else waiting behind you in the queue.
I hope you find this article helpful and if I have missed anything, then please feel free to tell me. Good luck with your writing and set to it, a world of expectant readers are dying to get stuck into that tasty piece you have prepared, even if it is a little cheesey. And if you lay it all out as I have above, they won't choke on it!
And before I go....
........one or two other tips to avoid your masterpiece being delayed in the submissions Q.
Illumination is an open minded group of writers and readers. However, there are certain things we do not like to see. And if we do see any of the following we will politely point out to you that any such offensive material will have to be changed by the writer.
Of course, this will inevitably be the cause of a delay in publishing your piece whilst it is being resolved. So, it is in your own best interests as a writer to help yourself by observing the guidance below.
May I remind you that the Illumination platform and readership is very much multi-cultural, multi-national, multi-ethnic and multi-gender respecting.
1.No racism of any kind towards anybody or group of individuals. 2.No hatred speech towards anybody or group of individuals. 3.No gratuitous obscene language. 4.No gratuitous extreme graphic or literal violence of any kind. 5.No homophobia towards anybody or any group of individuals. 6. No blatant advertising or calls to action (CTA's) for monetary gain, including donations. 7. Any and all affiliate links must be openly declared with an explanation as to what the links are to.
For further reading and helpful information please do read the Tree Langdon, CPA, CGA article below.
And here is another article telling you how to grow a following once you have started off on your journey as a writer.