9 Ways to Get Better at Writing

Writing well is hard. Very hard. There are no short-cuts or “hacks.” The only way to improve is through practice. Even so, there are a handful of principles that can help speed up the process.

Write Every Day.

Even if it’s only a single paragraph. Heck, even if it’s only a single sentence! Perhaps more than any other endeavor, I’ve found consistency to be absolutely essential to developing as a writer. Set aside a time each day — even if only just 15 minutes — to write.

Read Every Day.

As you do, note what you like about certain passages (replicate these things) and note what you don’t like about certain passages (avoid these things).

Exercise Every Day.

My best work— from ideas for articles to paragraphs to sentences— always seems to pop into my mind in the midst physical activity. Consider exercise a part of your job.

Sleep with a Notebook.

During big writing projects I often wake up in the middle of the night with ideas worth exploring — sometimes even entire paragraphs — in my head. I quickly jot them down in a notebook I keep on my nightstand so I can fall back asleep without having to worry about holding onto the idea.

Develop a Routine.

I write at the same time, out of the same places (a few neighborhood coffee shops) with the same drink (americano with steamed milk) snacking on the same thing (nuts and cereal). I do everything I can to offset the uncertainty — the terror — of the blank page.

Don’t Write and Edit at the Same Time.

When you write, just write. Getting stuff out of your head and onto the page is hard enough. Don’t make it impossible by trying to do it elegantly the first time around. My routine is straightforward: I write in the afternoon; edit the prior afternoon’s work the following morning; and then resume writing again later in the day.

Stop While You’re Ahead.

If you’ve been writing for more than 90 minutes and the going starts to get rough — stop! Trying to “force it” is almost always unproductive. Plus, if you end on a positive note it’s easier to pick back up on a positive note.

Work and Re-Work and Re-Work Some More.

It’s damn near impossible to get anything right the first time, or the second time, or even the third time. Accept that you — like just about every other writer — need to work like a craftsperson. Chiseling away at a sentence isn’t something to get frustrated about. It’s something to embrace. Also, read your work out loud. Doing so is the best way to get out of your own head, something integral to making sure your work makes sense to others.

Write for Yourself First.

If you find what you are writing interesting, odds are, you’ll do a better job writing about it and your audience will find it interesting, too.

Comments

Team Work - Meaning and Tips for better Team Work

A single brain is not always capable of making key decisions on its own. To come up with an efficient solution, an individual requires the help and advice of others. A team is established when individuals get together on a common platform with the common goal of completing a task. To guarantee optimum compatibility, team members should ideally come from similar backgrounds and have a single aim. To provide their best, the team members must complement each other and function as a single unit in tight cooperation. "There is no I in Team Work," as the saying goes, and each member must put the needs of his team first. Personal interests must take a second seat. Any team's performance is directly proportionate to the relationship between its members and their combined efforts. What is the definition of teamwork? Teamwork is defined as the sum of each team member's efforts toward the fulfilment of the team's goal. In other words, any team's backbone is its ability t

Scientists discover a new theory / The fundamental property of light – 150 years after Maxwell

Light plays a vital role in our everyday lives and technologies based on light are all around us. So we might expect that our understanding of light is pretty settled. But scientists have just uncovered a new fundamental property of light that gives new insight into the 150-year-old classical theory of electromagnetism and which could lead to applications manipulating light at the nanoscale. It is unusual for a pure-theory physics paper to make it into the journal Science. So when one does, it’s worth a closer look. In the new study, researchers bring together one of physics' most venerable set of equations – those of James Clerk’s Maxwell’s famous theory of light – with one of the hot topics in modern solid-state physics: the quantum spin Hall effect and topological insulators . To understand what the fuss is about, let’s first consider the behaviour of electrons in the quantum spin Hall effect. Electrons possess an intrinsic spin as if they were tiny spinning-tops,

19 Types Of Content Writing Services For Your Business

It’s hard to know which type of content writing service is the best for your business. There are so many different types of content writing services out there that it’s easy to get confused. You end up wondering if you’re choosing the right one for you. In this post, we’ll get rid of this confusion, once and for all. I’m going to list out the different kinds of writing services you could use. By the end of this article, you’ll know whether you need a copywriter, a content writer, or a social media marketer and how they can help you achieve your business goals. This post is also useful for writers who want to hone their writing skills in a specific area. Let’s dive in and learn what types of content writing services exist and when you should use them. (Bonus – if you want to hire the top 1% of writers, go to the bottom to learn how). Types of Content Writing Services As we go through the list of content writing services, you will find that many of them overlap. That’s perfectly

The LimitlessX - Get Tech Science News around the Globe

Search This Blog