This is a guest post by Joe Baldwin.
Even though there are many people who try really hard to find the science in writing, it still is an art. People would take courses all related to writing, hoping that they can learn the secrets that make good writing. Yeah, sure, enrolling to writing classes might teach them a thing or two about writing, but that’s only going to take them so far.
Even if you know how to write, it still takes passion and talent to thrive in the writing industry. Being able to write doesn’t make you a writer. As a matter of fact, if we were to teach everyone proper grammar, and then anybody would be able to write. Having the ability to write is not what makes a writer a writer. You’re a writer when you feel that writing is your self-expression. Being a writer means that you have some things in your mind that you want to let out to the world by some means, and that means is writing. But even writers have “down” days when they’re just out of ideas. No matter how hard they try, just nothing sinks in. They need the inspiration to spice up their creativity, but it’s not like inspiration just pops out every time you need it. No, it doesn’t work that way. It’s either you go look for it or you start honing your mind in its most creative form. This article is about the latter: being creative, because if you really plan to make writing your career, and then you can’t just rely on inspirations. Rather, you have to rely on yourself.
Most great writers believe that there are two ways to get better at writing: (1) read a lot (2) and write a lot. We can spend the whole day discussing the two, but this time we’re only going to focus on writing.
The more you write, the more you sharpen your writing muscles. With that, I wrapped up a list of short activities that you can do to build up your writing skills:
Freewriting
We often feel that free writing is waste of time. Why? Well, if we’re just going to throw away the output later, then why bother writing, right? But I’ll tell you something you might have missed. Did you ever experience staring at a blank page while you try so hard to get the words out of your head? Yeah, well, me too. It happened to tons of other writers too. That being said, spending 10 minutes a day for free writing isn’t much of a waste of time, rather than spending hours and hours in front of your monitor unable to write anything. Freewriting helps you to write on cue. When writing every day at the same time that you’re supposed to write, and then it wouldn’t take long before your mind gets used to writing in that time frame.
Editing somebody’s work
No matter how good we think we are at writing, we can still be better. There are great writers everywhere, but there never was a perfect writer. The ones who we view as the kings and queens of writing got to where they are because they allowed themselves to be better. There will always be room for improvement.
We could really benefit from learning a thing or two from other writers. They don’t have to be the best of the best. They just have to be writers. Well, it’s not like you’re going to have to ask them directly for tips. What you just have to do is offer to edit their work for them. You’ll be doing them and yourself a big favor.
You’re already acquainted with your own writing, but one way of stepping up the ladder with your writing skills is being exposed to other types of writing as well. Aside from that, being able to edit someone’s work can also help you see writing mistakes from a context, and that will up your writing knowledge.
Rewriting
I’ll say it again. Writing isn’t just about writing. It’s also about self-expression, and more than that, it’s also about expressing yourself in a creative way through writing. Rewriting can help you with that. You might have written that article well, but remember that there are still loads of other ways to write it. Practice your mind by rewriting some of the things that you’ve already written.
Headlining
Being able to write well is one thing, but being able to write stunning headlines is a different chapter. Let’s face it. It won’t matter if you wrote your piece in the most striking way because if you have a lousy headline and then chance are people won’t even get to appreciate your work.
It pays to be good at writing headlines. Not only will it be beneficial for audience purposes, but it will also help you think of different topics. There are times when we feel that we’ve already written about practically everything we can ever think of writing about. Well, that’s not entirely true. Even if you’ve already written up to a thousand blog posts on your website, there could still many things you can write about. Remember that there is more than one angle to every topic. Learning how to write the headline in a different manner will help us think up to many topics to write about.
About the guest post author:
Joe Baldwin is a professional writer for https://essaylook.com. He studied English literature and creative writing. He has experience with online web content including blogs, web page content, news, public relations, press releases, and long form sales and industrial presentations.