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Do you want to be good or do you want to be great?

I want to be great. Getting there isn’t going to happen overnight. But I’ve noticed there are a few things that definitely improve my writing skills a little bit every day.

The changes won’t happen instantly, and I’ve still a lot to learn, but they will happen.

You are a writer, right? You want to be published and widely read. You want to earn a living or at least a side income from your craft. You want to constantly improve, don’t you?

Good writers are easy to come by, great writers are few and far between.
Check out these three ways to improve your writing.

Write, edit, and write some more.

Writing on its own isn’t enough. You want to get better with each word, sentence, paragraph you put down on the page. You want to experiment with different forms of writing. With short paragraphs, with long paragraphs. You want to be able to keep to the rules and no when to break them especially when you’re writing fiction or blogging.

Write every day. You don’t have to formally sit down and write for an hour or two for the time you write to be valuable time.

Ten minutes is enough.

Get up ten minutes earlier if you have to. Start journaling. Get into the habit of writing down your thoughts and feelings. Look out the window and write down what you see. Show, don’t tell. Use descriptive words. Paint a picture with your words.

Have an hour?

• Write a pitch to your favourite magazine.
• Pen an article on a quirky angle of something you love doing.
• Draft a short story.
• Brainstorm an idea for a book.
• Write a poem.
• Stretch your writing muscles in whatever way you can.

After your done. Use a program like Grammarly to check your writing. Writers write. That’s what they are good at. Editing is not necessarily their forte.

To improve your writing you need to edit. Check out the Elements of Style book. It’s short and sweet and has everything you need to know. Another goodie is Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. Learn the rules so later you know how to break them.

Put your piece into Grammarly (there’s a free and paid option). See what results it spits out. Understand where you went wrong. If you need clarification invest in an editor to help you, at least in the beginning. Or if you’re lucky to have a friend who’s a grammar nazi, see if they’d be willing to read through your work and pick out all your mistakes – just promise them you won’t get offended and never be their friend again!

Read more books, magazines, newspapers and anything you can get your hands on

To be a good writer you also have to be a ready. I really don’t understand how some writers say they do not read. It makes me sad actually.

Reading fuels creativity. It is the backbone of writing. Even in fiction you need to read (ie. research, duh) to be able to write adequately. You are reading this now, aren’t you?

You need to put something in your brain to get something out in return.

It’s easy to say you don’t have time to read but if that is the case, then you probably don’t have the time to write either. You might be better off doing something more in line with your time availability.

There is always time to read and like with writing it doesn’t have to be a one or two hour stint.

10 minutes is enough.

How much can you read in 10 minutes?

• 2-3 articles in a magazine.
• 5-10 pages of a fiction book.
• 5 -10 pages of a non-fiction book

Each time you read your brain processes the information, retains what it requires, allows you to remember what you need to and stores the rest in your subconscious. You never know when an idea will form from the information you have obtained or what topic it’s going to be related to.

I’ve watched action flicks and got article ideas from them.

I’ve read non-fiction books and came up with book plots.

You are a creative and you need to add fuel to the fire to ensure it keeps burning. Start by reading things you like and then move onto reading everything you can get your hands on – the good, the bad and the ugly. Every book can teach you something.

I used to keep a spreadsheet of the books I read, now Goodreads does it for me. You can even enter a reading challenge. I’m aiming for 52 books this year. That’s one per week. Could you read 12 books? 24? 100?

Get published and use feedback to get better

Writing for yourself is one thing. Write for an audience is a completely different kettle of tea.

Until I published my first book, Lethal Disposal, I didn’t feel like my writing was improving even though I had been writing fiction for the better part of two decades. But I had no audience other than myself. I was too scared to show anyone my work, and so I was also slow to improve.

As soon as I hit publish, something clicked in my brain and my writing style and output changed. I was no writing for an audience and I wanted to publish again, and get better at it.

The second and third books I wrote were novellas. I wanted to experiment with a shorter style and write quickly. My writing improved with each one. Scrivener helped me pick up the pace.

Blogging has been the same. I’ve started eight blogs since 2008. I have learnt something from each one of them. I probably would have improved quicker had I made contact with other bloggers. I was shy, naive and thought I could do it all myself. No, you really cannot. You need to connect with others to grow and improve. We are not alone on this planet and one way or another we need each other to succeed.

Need to get published. Why not start a blog? Check out this post for starting a blog and you can do it today, in less than 30 minutes. The post is aimed for authors but you can use the instructions for a blog in any niche.

Being a writer is a job that allows for lifelong learning. It’s one of the reasons I want to do it full time. I’m an eternal student. If I had the time (made the time), I would go back to university in a heart beat to study things like law, forensics, physiotherapy, nutrition, criminology and psychology. I’m a geek in that regard. Writing can let me in to all those topics and so much more without having to sit in a lecture hall and spend tens of thousands of dollars. I can write, read, and interview experts, all the while learning about the topics that interest me and becoming a better writer. Thanks to the internet I can share it with an audience, you, almost instantaneously, or I can use the information I gather in my fiction books.

What topics keep you up at night?

There’s never been a better time to be a writer than today.