As an aspiring writer, you might be thinking about how to improve your writing. Even if you don’t want to become a published author, being good at writing is a crucial life skill to have. The following strategies can eventually help you become better at writing.
Read on to learn more.
Read Tons of Books
If you want to become better at writing and actually get a book published someday, you should be an avid reader. The rule is as simple as this: you should read widely and everything – not only your favorite genres and authors.
The thing is that the best authors in the world have a wide base of knowledge and experience that they have collected from the different authors they have read. You can do the same by reading widely, which is to take things, ideas, and inspirations from different sources and turn them into something new that no one has actually read before.
Get Out of Your Comfort Zone
To improve your writing, you should definitely get out of your comfort zone and read books by authors you disagree with. So, step out of the world of your favorite genre and explore a whole variety of genres. You don’t have to like and agree with everything that you come across, but you certainly want to keep an open heart and flexible mind to allow things to pass through you.
This is one effective way to create a story that is truly interesting to your ideal readers. So, you will definitely want to expand your reading palette.
Engage with the Content You Read
Now, when we ask you to get out of your comfort zone and read interesting content, we don’t ask you to be a passive reader, but we advise you to be an active reader who engages with the content you read.
For instance, if you are reading a book and you come across a sentence or a way of expression that you really like – take a pause and absorb the essence of it. Perhaps retrieve your journal and jot down the sentence. Actively think about how you would have written the sentence or the paragraph.
What asking this question does to your mind is that it makes you exercise your brain muscles and engage with the book that you are reading in an intense way compared to consuming it passively.
Write Down Things That Stand Out to You
When it comes to improving your writing, you can immensely benefit from taking a novel writing class, that is, if you are currently planning to write a novel. Having a learner’s attitude is a vital part of becoming a successful writer. Speaking of writing, you should also make it a habit to write down things as a way to make notes about what other authors said in their books and what stood out to you while reading their books.
By doing so, you can ponder about them later. You can also use them late when working on your own writing project and fit them in different situations. However, in order to use the things that you do not do well, you need to write often so that you can effectively build your writing skills.
Establish A Routine
In order to improve anything, you need to do it every day. On that note, if you want to become a better writer or improve your writing altogether, you should develop the habit of writing. Now, the formula of building a habit that becomes the norm for you: you must make time for it every day.
Building a writing ritual ensures that you write every day instead of walking the path that many aspiring writers choose, which is to write only when they “feel like it.”
Your writing ritual is essentially about building a set of habits that will help you get into the writing process a little faster.
Choose A Timeline
When it comes to establishing a writing ritual, you might want to start with selecting a time and place for the task. Make sure to choose a distraction-free environment for writing. Ideally, you should be focusing on nothing else but writing for that duration.
It mustn’t essentially be a fun place, but it must be a place where you won’t feel tempted to play video games or binge-watch your favorite shows.
Choose the Length
If you want to improve your writing, you must not only select a place that will allow you to write in solitude and free from distractions – but you should also select the length of your daily writing schedule. On that note, you can think beyond the limitations of setting up a word count for yourself, but choose the time or minutes that you want to spend writing.
For instance, instead of telling yourself to write five hundred words every day, it would work in your best interest if you were to choose how much time you want to spend writing, which can be half an hour or two hours.
You will be surprised to know that once you have that momentum, you have all that creative juice pumping through your mind, and you might even forget the timeline or word count and keep writing unless you feel good.
Let Go Of Perfectionism
Now, you might be a perfectionist – but when it comes to writing and getting better at this craft, in the beginning, it might be in your best interest to let go of professionalism and only focus on getting things onto the blank page.
Now, you already know that your first draft will be at the top of the list of your worst works. This aspect indicates that whatever you write and whenever you complete your first draft, you will have to edit and rewrite everything anyway.
So, let go of your inner critic and perfectionist for the time you work on your draft. Focus on getting things out on paper now, and keep in mind that you will always be able to edit it later.
