As a self media practitioner, how do you accumulate your own material?

2017 is one of the best times, countless people who love to write to successfully ride on the new media blowout development of the convenient car, to realize the annual income of millions of dollars, the dream of financial freedom. Such a new media "bull market" makes countless people look red-eyed, leading to a large number of "writing white" unhesitatingly into this torrent, in an attempt to pay for knowledge in this era to get a piece of the pie. I am a member of this group of "writing white".

When I started writing, I daydreamed every day, and before I finished writing the article, I began to fantasize about how many likes I would receive after publishing it, and how many new fans I would add, and I always felt that my monthly salary of tens of thousands of dollars was already beckoning me, but my daydreams were really just a figment of my imagination, and the reality of the world gave me a headache, and the articles that I wrote didn't even have many people to look at, and my submissions were always rejected, and I had only a handful of likes and fans. I thought about giving up, but I persisted. I started spending a lot of time learning to write, reading several books on writing techniques and taking some writing classes, but the truth is, I still can't write a good article.

After a period of detours, I finally realized some insights, and finally understood why the same structure, the same point of view of other people's articles is more colorful than mine? The reason for this is that my accumulation is too little, and the articles I write lack depth and height.

There are two indicators that affect the readership of an article: the open rate and the forwarding rate, the open rate depends on a good title, and the forwarding rate depends on high-quality content. The first one is the one with the best content, and the second one is the one with the best content. I think it should be a large amount of accumulated material to do after the citation to the hand, and then to be able to write a wonderful flower. Good material for the article is like seasoning in the food, the use of proper, not only icing on the cake, but also make people savor.

So how do you accumulate writing material? After a period of time, I have found a set of methods that work well.

I.From what sources does the material come?

1, Books, magazines, newspapers

Mr. Yang Jiang once said: Young people, your problem is that you think too much and read too little. Reading is the foundation of writing, and only continuous input can guarantee high-quality output. We are all young and have limited experience, but we can extend our experience and feelings through reading, and reading a book is not like following the author to experience a period of life.

But we also have to face the problem that as we grow older, our memory is gradually declining, in addition to a few so that we have a deep feeling of the fragment, the other basically read and forget, the following share a few from the reading of the accumulation of material in a good way.

? Three-color sticky notes

I think posting sticky notes while reading is a habit most people have, but fewer will use three-color sticky notes, and this method is mentioned in Junichi Harajiri's Efficient Readers, who suggests that we need to use three colors of sticky notes to mark our reading:

Red sticky notes: Where the author intends to emphasize; and locate the lesson part. Blue sticky notes: topics that you can expand on and write about yourself, for the inspiration part. Yellow sticky notes: places that are well worth referring to in terms of word expression, or original texts to excerpt when writing your own book review.

On the basis of Junichi Harajiri, combined with my practical use, I made some slight adjustments, or three colors, each color represents a type of material: red sticky notes - opinions, blue sticky notes - golden sentence, yellow sticky notes - wonderful examples. This has two advantages: it's easy to take notes and you can find it quickly when you need it later.

? Making notes

This method needs no introduction, we all know the saying: a good memory is better than a bad pen. In addition to the traditional paper notes method, you can also record in the Douban notes area and cloud notes.

Anatomy of a book

The so-called anatomy of a book is to disassemble the book that you have read, to cut out the useful material and put it into a folder. With books, I can't afford or tolerate this, and this method is mostly used for newspapers and magazines.

RIA Sticky Note Method

The "Heart of the Text" says: "The material for the essay is everywhere, not only in the book, but also in the book, and even if you learn from the book, it's just some old stuff. The most important thing is to trigger the effort. The most important thing is to trigger the effort, that is, from one thing to other things, from a sentence in the book, a point of view associated with other books read somewhere in the relationship or an event in life can be used to support the sentence. This kind of trigger is the best kind of writing material, fresh and full of "feelings".

Reading triggers and thinking are really important, because from the day of reading, we are looking at the world through someone else's eyes, without thinking for ourselves, and using the knowledge gained from the book to write is just a cliché, however, reading in-depth and active thinking is a very difficult thing for many people. Recently, I have found that using the RIA method can effectively allow readers to take the initiative to think.

The RIA method divides reading into R (original text fragment), I (restate knowledge in your own words), A1 (describe your own relevant experience), and A2 (how I will apply it later).

★R: While reading, come across a particular heartfelt snippet, stop and cross it out.

★I: Repeat the knowledge of the original text in your own words to achieve understanding of the knowledge itself, write it down, and paste it on the appropriate book page.

★A1: Review whether you have experienced, or seen similar things or situations that make this knowledge really relevant to you.

★A2: Combine the knowledge (ideas/suggestions/inspirations) you read with your own experience and envision how you can apply it in the future.

In these four steps, the A1 sticky note is an active process of thinking about and triggering the reading, and these experiences and reflections are perfect fodder for writing.

2, all kinds of new media platforms

Now all kinds of new media platforms are emerging, such as microblogging, microblogging, Douban, Jane's book, and all kinds of listening to the book APP. these platforms will be released every day a lot of good articles, which is also our main source of material.

WeChat Subscription

I just opened my cell phone to look at, I pay attention to the WeChat subscription dozens of subscription number, two thirds of which subscription number to maintain the frequency of the day, and updated more than one article per day. In the face of such a large amount of information, material collection is also about skills: to determine their own writing position, in order to target the collection of information. For example, I am now focusing on self-growth, I will pay more attention to this kind of subscription, such as books, workplace charging treasure, etc., every day to push the article I will read, there are good articles I will bookmark, and do on the label, and then when there is enough time to do a comb. Some articles may have a particular sentence or paragraph that makes me feel something, so I don't collect them, I just take a screenshot of the place where I feel something or copy it directly to my cloud notes and save it.

Jane Booker

Jane Booker also has a lot of good articles, and Jane Booker has a good tool - the topic, I built some of my own topics, the good articles are divided into categories of income in the topic, and need to refer to it later to find it very convenient.

Chinese

Chinese is a question and answer platform, you can search for the information you need to see a lot of high-quality answers to the question, some of the answers to the question of the number of people, you can also find a lot of different points of view, not only search for material and can expand their thinking.

Listening APP

Listening APP has a lot of, such as get, book, Himalaya, etc., their speech is very high quality, of course, because it is a speech, speech in the point of view of the book we can get through the reading of the book, but a speech will usually be attached to a number of case study, it is the collection of case study material is a good channel.

3, observation of life

All the writing material comes from life, the "heart of the text" has said: successful novels are not a matter of fact, but it is the world's most real story.

Becoming a Writer also says: "A true genius has a never-ending source, and that is one reason why everything that happens in his life is available to him."

The reason we can't write is that we observe too little, we are indifferent to the "little things" that happen around us, and it seems that only the big things can get into the eyes, and trigger feelings. Because we have lost our curiosity about the outside world, nothing can attract you, can not trigger your desire to express, how can you write a good article?

The best fresh material for our writing is the insights and examples we get from life. How to collect this material? You can take a notebook with you, use your cell phone memo or note, and record your feelings in your life; if it's convenient, you can also use your voice to record your feelings, which saves you time and effort, and then you can organize it afterwards; you can also write a diary every day to record your experiences and feelings on that day, and after you have written more, you'll find that your diary has also become a treasure trove of material for you.

4, watching movies

Watching movies is also a good way to extend the experience of expanding eyesight, high scores in the movie of the classic lines, storylines, values output are the source of writing material, the use of such material, it is easy to trigger the reader's **** Ming, after all, do not watch the movie of the people are very few.

Two,How to organize the material more practical?

When I first bought Kindel, I collected free e-books through various channels, and bought several Gs on Taobao for a few bucks. However, I haven't organized these e-books until now, and they are still lying around in the netbook, and to be honest, I don't know which e-books are genuine or pirated, and I rarely look for them from the netbook for fear of messing up the layout. I seldom look for e-books from the net disk to read. This is the result of allowing resources to be disorganized, we accumulate material is the same, if there is no careful organization, the process of accumulating material is just a waste of time, want to use always feel that there is déjà vu material, but just can not find.

1, storage tool selection

The selection of material storage tools is a headache, in which I have gone through a lot of detours. Initially, I used a paper notebook to take notes, but two factors made me not stick to it: I was used to typing and the process of transcribing was really painful; and it was very difficult to find notes on paper. I've also tried using computer folders to store material, and transcribing and finding it is no longer a problem, however, a new problem has arisen, I don't always write at home, and when I write at work or in a cafe or something like that, the material is nowhere to be found.

Through personal practice, I recommend using Cloud Notes as a tool for organizing material. The first is that cloud notes can be searched, and it is very easy to find, and the second is that cloud notes can be synchronized, as long as you install the APP, you can open our material on any electronic device, and no matter when and where you organize your material, it can be synchronized and displayed on other devices.

There are two cloud notes I'm using: Impression Notes and Youdao Cloud Notes. I don't use Impression Notes very often because I'm not used to its folder feature, which doesn't allow for multi-layer hierarchies, but only two layers, and although the tabbed search function is very powerful, it's intolerable to people with a little bit of categorization compulsion like me, and it's only possible to be online on two devices at the same time. But it also has the advantage of being able to directly import articles from WeChat, Jane's Book, and Listening Book platforms. Because of this feature, I'm keeping Impression Notes as a backup for the time being.

While we've been using it, we've really come to love it, and its folders are multi-layered and hierarchical, so it's a good idea to divide them into smaller ones, and the search function is also very powerful, and it's possible to be online on multiple devices at the same time. It has become the main battlefield for me to collect materials.

2, material classification

Everyone has seen Li Ao's anatomical reading method: after reading the book was disassembled by him, and the useful material was cut down and put in different categories. He said: I collect information I do not remember it by memory, I rely on the details of the very patient effort to hook it tightly, in the information folder. My memory is good enough to memorize these headings.

So when we are organizing the material, the finer the classification, the better we can hook the material tightly. Through my writing practice, I've come to feel that material needs to be categorized in at least three tiers. The first tier is a large positioning classification, such as psychology, history and humanities, self-growth, etc.; the second tier is a medium category, take self-growth, it can be divided into self-discipline, reading, time management and so on. The third tier is a branch of the second tier, which can be divided into these categories: title, point of view, golden sentence, inspiration, case, book list, quality article reference.

? My Material Categories

Just by building folders according to these categories and constantly filling them with material, we can build a powerful library of material.

Jim Collins mentioned a concept called the flywheel effect in From Good to Great, saying: imagine a flywheel. When you push it at first, it takes a lot of effort. But slowly, every time you push it, the effort you spend will be transformed into the energy of the flywheel, so that every time it turns faster than the previous one. In the end, it will turn up by itself, faster and faster, no longer need you to push. Writing composition is the same, at first it is difficult, need to spend a lot of effort to accumulate material, but you have to believe that this is a quantitative change caused by qualitative change in the process, when you accumulate enough material, a lot of writing practice, you can also pen as a godsend, a good article in one fell swoop.

Lastly with Hemingway's classic quote and everyone **** encouragement: the real noble is not better than others, but better than the past themselves. Every day to do a good job of accumulation, no need to be impatient, what should come will always come.