There are no shortcuts to becoming a good writer, as the only way to be a good writer or improve your writing skills is to practice. Writing is hard and as true as that is, there are still practical tips you can put into place to help you become a better writer.
Check on the list below but keep in mind that even with these tips, becoming the best of a writer that you can be is not going to be an easy journey.
Write Every Day
To become a good or better writer, you need to make sure that you write consistently. It doesn’t matter if it’s just a single paragraph or even a single sentence (depending on how lazy you are). To make this easy for yourself, you can set aside a time each day to write. Writing is like every other skill that can be improved through repetition and practice so ensure you write and you can even have fun at it by writing what you love.
Read Every Day
Read other great writers because it helps you develop ideas and hone your own writing skills. Stephen King said it best, “If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” Make books your new best friend if becoming a better or great writer is your dream. As you read other writers, take note of the things you like about their style and what you don’t like. The idea is not to imitate but to develop your own style.
Don’t Write and Edit at the Same Time.
As stated in the second sentence of this article, writing is hard so don’t make things even more difficult for yourself or next to impossible by trying to make your writing elegant the first time around. Just get the ideas out of your head first and edit later. When you write, just write!
Know When To Stop
Don’t force your writing, every now and then, writers have writer’s block and forcing yourself to write at this period is not going to give you your best work. Maybe it is not a writer’s block but simply that you have been writing for a long stretch of time, you must know when to give yourself a break because once the going gets rough, the writing becomes unproductive.
Don’t Be Against Editing
Every piece of writing needs to be reworked as it is near impossible to get anything right the first time, or the second time, or even the third time. When you are done writing, go back to your work and rework it, you can also get an extra pair of eyes to take a look at what you have written. In reworking your writing, you can read it out loud to figure if it reads smoothly and makes sense to you.
Write for Yourself First.
If you find what you are writing interesting, odds are, you will do a better job writing about it and your audience will find it interesting, too.
