Six Ways to Improve Your Writing

For anyone with something to say looking for a way to say it, the immediate future seems to be arriving with a podcast mic in one hand and a camera in the other. By all accounts, everyone has a podcast, video strategy is the name of the game, and blogs are dead. Are we observing the slow demise of the written word? Hardly. Book sales have risen above 2017's[1], long-form content performs better than short-form content[2], and millennials prefer reading the news over watching videos[3]. Simply put, words aren’t dead, busy people still enjoy reading, and the pen remains a mighty source of influence. So if you aspire to use the new year to grow as a writer, you’ve picked a great time.

Like gym memberships in January, people’s desire to learn how to navigate that peculiar space between a capital letter and a period spikes every year.?Whether you’re looking to journal more, add the cartilage of prose to your book outline, or knock the dust from your website, here are six ways to help you improve your writing.

I’ll begin with three “rhythms” that writers should embed into the subterranean layers of their mental landscape.

1.???Know you’re a (struggling) writer: Kill the myth that says the world is full of “gifted” writers, who effortlessly spin readable, error-free prose, and “other” writers, forever condemned to shoving a Sisyphean period up one side of a sentence only to watch it crash to the bottom (and you underneath it) to begin over again. The truth is there are no gifted writers. Any “gifted” writer you’ve met committed to two things long ago: reading a lot and writing a lot. No one sits at a yellow pad or keyboard and finds themselves in the land of “having written” without paying the tolls of drafting and editing and dreaming of daytime drinking. You’re a writer—don’t go stitching that on a throw pillow yet, but you can at least whisper it into the mirror. More precisely, you’re a struggling writer, which is exactly where you ought to be.

2.???Read writing books by journalists, not marketers: Not every book on writing by a marketing professional is bad. But, on the whole, finding a quality writing book by a marketing professional is like finding a book on car engines by someone who makes bumper stickers and window decals. It’s no accident most writing classics are from journalists. Whether it’s William Zinsser or Roy Peter Clark, June Casagrande or Lynne Truss, journalists (and novelists) know what makes for clear writing, great storytelling, and coaching you through the pain of growing your writing muscles. Another advantage of learning from journalists is they feel about industry-speak and jargon the same way a Baptist preacher feels about fog machines: Get thee behind me, Satan. Journalists turned writing coaches will teach you how to employ the energy of clean syntax to generate the power of rhetoric—how to grab and keep someone’s attention and even persuade him or her—on its own terms, free of fluff and gaudy clichés. (I bought a book by a “renowned” copywriter in January, and I used it as kindling in the fall.)

3.???Create daily, realistic writing goals: Despite the onslaught of gym selfies early Januarys bring, most treadmills sit vacant by February. Why? Most people create huge exercise goals that immediately incentivize Netflix and ice cream binges. The goals weren’t the problem; the immediate expectation of results was. It’s okay if you don’t write that book this year. If you do, wonderful. But if you’re sitting down to blank screen already thinking about cover designs and Amazon reviews, you’re setting yourself up for frustration. Start small. Create goals you can reach the other side of. The point isn’t to kill yourself writing. The point is consistency. Writers become writers because they put their asses in their chairs. Show up. Write 300 words about your mom, 400 words about your job, or 1000 words about why you’re quitting writing. Then do it again. Give me one sentence about the smell of burnt stuffing, stat. Start small, then add to it. Write fast. Write daily. Whatever you do, just write.

Here are three tips to keep in mind as you hone your craft.

1.???Write to be clear, not impressive: My favorite question to ask in a writing workshop is “What’s the ultimate goal for writing?” Answers like “express an idea,” “convince someone,” “sell something,” etc., usually ring out. They’re all fair and appropriate. But at the top of the stream, where source and substance meet, is the word “clarity.” Clear writing is the back that all other writing objectives hitch a ride on. Effective, convincing writing is clear writing. Impressive writing is clumsy. Writers who seek to impress their readers club them over the head with mile-long transitions (“You’re going to be reading about…”), laborious Latin phrases ending in -tion, -ment, or -ence (“indicates” becomes “an indication of” or “assess” degenerates into “make an assessment of”), and redundant phrases (“ongoing process”). Writers who aim to be clear have no less a difficult task. Instead of dragging the reader along, however, a good writer clears the path of obstacles so that readers can enjoy the ride for themselves. Practice clear writing by asking yourself “What do I want to say?” as you write and “Have I said it?” as you edit. Clear writing equals more than “See Joan run,” while keeping you from, “Carefully observe with your eyes the pace with which Joan, a phenomenal specimen of athletic prowess, conquers the expanse of earth before her.” Yuck.

2.???Practice your verbs: A sentence is an engineered explosion, moving the energy of language in a precise direction to create change. The explosive element is the verb, so learn how to handle it. You can ask yourself a few questions:

- How often am I using active verbs instead of state-of-being or linking verbs (forms of the verb “be”: is, am, are, was, were, been, being)?

- Are my verbs close to the intended subject, or is there an intervening phrase between them? (e.g.: The cat, hungry and tired of waiting for its food, tackled the open bag of treats. vs. The hungry cat tackled the open bag of treats, tired of waiting for its food.)

- Do I use static, vague verbs or verbs with images attached? Choose specific, vivid verbs like “grabbed” or “snatched,” not “took.”

The English language has spanned hundreds of years (if not thousands, depending on what you count), which means verbs abound. Peruse for them regularly and collect fresh finds.

3.???Learn to cut clutter: William Zinsser said, "Clutter is the disease of American writing." Like a surgeon to a potentially fatal infection, you need to develop a zero-tolerance policy with clutter and remove it with no mercy from your writing. After some time, you’ll develop an eye and ear for clear writing. With it, you’ll develop the habit of “murdering your darlings”: removing empty words, useless adjectives and adverbs, and other nonessentials.(4) You’ll also learn the fun of transforming wordy phrases into single-word modifiers and of catching misplaced adverbs, which can take you from “only writing useless words” to “writing only useless words.” Do this enough and you may find yourself among those who say with the great Gertrude Stein, “Why should a sequence of words be anything but a pleasure?”

If you never find it a pleasure, no harm or foul. But if your readers find your writing a pleasure, then you’re onto something.

Happy Writing.

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[1] Jim Milliot, Print Sales Up in 2018 to Date, Publishersweekly.com. 5 October 2018. Accessed on December 23rd, 2018. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/78257-print-unit-sales-up-in-2018-to-date.html

[2] Andy Crestodina, Blogging Statistics and Trends: The 2018 Survey of 1000+ Bloggers. Access on 23 December 2018. https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/blogging-statistics/

[3] Amy Mitchell, Younger adults more likely than their elders to prefer reading the news. 6 October 2016. Accessed on December 23, 2018. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/06/younger-adults-more-likely-than-their-elders-to-prefer-reading-news/

[4] Coined by Sir Arthur Quiller-Coach and popularized by Mark Twain as “Kill your Darlings.”