Have you ever been intrigued by an article written by someone who has a passion for writing?
Has it ever left an impact on your mind? After reading an article have you ever thought about how the writer has put his thoughts out to the world so beautifully that too in such simple words?
Has a writer inspired you to exhibit your thoughts to the world?
Well, that’s what writing is all about. You write a piece; people read; they like it; they relate, and they follow you!
Why become a writer?
It often happens that people ask, “How do I become a writer?”
So to the people who still have this question in their minds, let me ask you something…
Do you chat with your friends on WhatsApp or send out work emails?
Do you connect with your acquaintances over social media via chat?
Aren’t you already a writer? Believe me, EVERYONE is!
What you simply want to know is How to get better at it.
In my opinion, writing is one of the most important skills that you must possess. Being a good writer makes you a coherent thinker and a fluent communicator. In fact, writing is one of the few things that you do every day, no matter who you are or what you do. Whether you post a piece on your LinkedIn account, send out an email to your peers, or chat over a WhatsApp text. Having a writing skill is one of the most valuable skills, and it is impossible to deny this.
But, just because we all write somewhere does not explicitly mean that we are great at it or can be called “writers.”
This piece of writing will focus on how to become better at writing and help you understand why it is essential to continue developing your writing skills from time to time.
If you are a little lazy to read, here is a short version (but remember, there is no shortcut to success)
How to become a writer:
- Read as much as possible
- Write something every day
- Start blogging
- Book Recommendation “Everybody Writes” by Ann Handley
- Register for an Online Writing Course
- Get honest critiques on your writing
- Start a journal
- Involve yourself in intellectual conversations
- Write like a drunkard; edit sober
- Figure out why you want to be a Writer.
Well. If you are pretty serious about writing and really want to become a writer, you must read on. This might be helpful!
10 simple ways to become a writer
Read as much as possible.
To be good at writing or improve your skills as a writer, you must read. And by reading, I do not mean reading WhatsApp forwards but something valuable and meaningful. High-quality books. The more you read, the more ideas you’ll generate. Your exposure to high-quality reading will enhance your writing skills.
If you read something that inspires you to write, you may slowly find yourself starting to involve those ideas in your own writing.
This is just not it. Reading gives you lots of ideas to write about, and the more you read, the more ideas you’ll be able to generate. Here are some excellent tips to get you started.
Write something every day.
Just like anything else in life, practice makes a man perfect.
So is the case with writing. If you aim to tweet, say, thrice in one month, that will not help much. Writing needs constant practice. But, if you write a little something every day, that can help you go a long way.
If you write every day, it will help you develop a flow of ideas, and you will find it easier to write. Slowly, you’ll have clearer thoughts, and you’ll enjoy writing more. Isn’t it always fun to do things you want?
The best way is to commit to a certain amount of writing every day. To make it easier for you, these are some writing tools to lead you to the right path.
Start blogging
Blogging is a great way to build spontaneity in writing. It is one of the fastest ways to become a writer simply.
Another plus point of blogging is that while you write your thoughts and opinions out to the world, they follow your work. This means people appreciate your writing and knowledge and that you end up impacting lives.
While you blog, you write things that people can visualize and relate to. They try to picture themselves doing what you write.
Blogging is a good start for a non-fiction writer. So, be a memorable writer intending to connect with people.
Book Recommendation “Everybody Writes” by Ann Handley
Yet another way to improve your skills as a writer is to read a lot of books.
I would make a particular recommendation of this book, “Everybody Writes” by Ann Handley. This book entails explaining how we write, market, and promote our content even if we don’t see it happening.
It focuses on writing content that is engaging and exciting and will do wonders online.
A few more books that I would recommend are
- Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
- The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Register for an Online Writing Course:
Another way to improve your skills as a writer is to get yourself enrolled in an online course. There are a lot of courses that are available online. You just need to log on the websites like Udemy, Coursera, and some other top websites. One of my favorite courses is the Complete Copywriting Course: Write to Sell Like a Pro by Udemy.
An exciting course, this teaches you all about writing intriguing copies. It focuses on how you can be better at copywriting or how you can be more persuasive. You can find a good number of courses if you search on Google.
Get honest critiques on your writing.
You must gather honest feedback on your writing. There is one big problem with writers and a professional community like creative and business people as a whole.
The ones closest to you would not want you to feel bad. Hence, all you will receive from them are positive feedbacks. Instead, they could rather politely point out where you can improve.
When working on something, you must incorporate criticism because one never begins anything new as a perfectionist. The last thing you would do while you put your work out to the world to see has errors and lousy content.
Your best friend or your sibling might not be the best person to tell you where did you go wrong, neither would your significant other. It is always better to ask a business peer, your teacher, or an online community to get REAL feedback.
Start a journal
Journaling is another prevalent practice that you would see a blogger do. It improves and organizes your thought processes and helps in prioritizing your tasks, eventually improving your writing.
Like mentioned earlier, the most important thing which can help you to improve your skills as a writer is to write frequently.
Journaling can be another one of the best ways to do that. And journaling not only means just writing content; it gives you the freedom to experiment with your thoughts and creativity in the form of art too. Journal writing can be an easy and creative way to enhance your writing without the pressure of being judged by the public.
Involve yourself in intellectual conversations
This could be one of the best pieces of advice I would give you. The more conversational you are, the easier it is for people to read what you write. This will also make you more trustworthy and credible as a writer when people will follow you.
“Write drunk, edit sober.”
I have quoted Earnest Hemmingway up here. He was an American literary icon famous as a short story writer, journalist, and sportsman.
You could refer to this as a piece of honest advice, but this inclines that your writing must be free-flowing and as creative as possible. You must bring out your raw personality as a human being through your writing. Don’t just take down things from the internet and add links, and format the piece.
Just write what you feel is right!
Once you have completed the first draft, with a new mood, go back to it, make the edits, revise, and make sure all of the claims you have made there stand true.
Figure out why do you want to be a Writer
There could be N number of reasons why you’d want to become a writer in the first place. Maybe you’d like to do freelance writing or maybe write for B2B websites. If not those, you might just simply want to publish your own books.
The point here is that you must figure out your main reason for writing. That will only help you to become a better writer and motivate you to hone your writing skills.
So what motivates you?
Is it writing compelling Facebook posts to show your friends how great your life is really hitting? Is it to get the attention of the famous influencers with your cheeky and cleverly crafted emails?
Or is it something more than that?
Improving your skills as a writer
Transforming into a better writer takes a lot of practice. And if you aspire to be good at writing, you must be already practicing a lot.
No, seriously — you write a lot. Like I mentioned earlier, if you send out emails, you write!
Even if you feel that you are not a writer, you put thoughts into text more often than you realize. If your job demands it, you also make things like presentations, press releases, media reports, and the list goes on…
So, as you are already writing, you might want to be better at it. So, to help you improve skills as a writer, here are a few tips:
- Structure your writing:
It is okay to write with a free flow of thoughts when you are journaling, but if you aim to involve in a conversation with the readers, you must bring some shape to those wordy thoughts. Consider these tips below:
- You must be clear on the concepts you’re writing about
Quoting what Albert Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” So before you begin writing, take a moment to chalk out a mental explanation of the concept in your mind to the six-year-old who lives there. (Don’t we all have one?) If your writing goal is to attain a particular result, ask yourself what it should be. Before you begin writing, have a clear purpose and stick to it.
- Outline the complex parts of your message
It does not require much thinking-through to come up with an average text message, but if you’re writing something that involves a lot of research and can be more complex, with multiple angles, questions, or requests, sort all of it out before you sit down to write. Structuring and outlining, or even just some quick short notes about the topics that you want to cover, can save your time and help you clarify questions later. And while I speak of questions…
- Think about your readers’ questions
Improving your writing and creating content involves putting yourself in your reader’s shoes can help you add glitches to your content. Ask yourself if they have enough context to understand what you’ve written for them? If not, fill in the blanks. But…
- Don’t explain everything more than required.
Take time to plan your thoughts well in advance. You must be able to keep things simple. Apply the KISS(Keep It Simple, Stupid) rule.
The basic idea here is to let the reader understand what you’re communicating to them without overwhelming them with insignificant details. Avoid getting in the details that you need not. Look through each piece of information and ask yourself if you would read it in the first place. If not, get rid of it.
2. Tighten Your Writing
We sometimes write as we talk, and that can be a good thing. It keeps our writing conversational (read more on that in about a moment.) But, making it wordy can make your text hard to read, and you may sound as if you lack opinion. Consider practicing the following tips to improve your writing skills.
- Go easy on the preposition.
Prepositions aren’t very tricky to understand, but you must have the proper knowledge to use, and understanding that concept does require some explanation. Enhance your knowledge of prepositions, and then try to simplify them whenever it makes sense. Your writing will get the much-needed clarity boost.
- Keep your sentences simple.
Literature enthusiasts can write long, complex sentences flawlessly. So, why can’t you? Well, initially, you’re probably not trying to write like Tolstoy. The shorter the written piece is, the better it is because short, less complicated sentences are easier to read and understand. Like I said before, Keep it simple, silly!
- Read it out aloud.
Speaking of flow, reading your writing aloud can help you see whether it flows smoothly. While you read, you can also point out if you have made any factual or grammatical errors. If it sounds wordy and complicated, simplify the sentences a little. If you trip over parts that you feel are protracted and overly complex sentences, rewrite those. Reading your work out loud works the best!
- Infuse your personality into your writing
Like I said before, bringing out your personality through your writing is the best way to develop a writing style. Use the phrases and slang you would typically use while in a conversation but don’t be too frank to lose professionalism.
When it’s appropriate, add in a relevant personal narrative. In the most formal or professional writing settings, be yourself when you write the piece.
Doing so can surely help you to improve your skills as a writer.
- Practice makes a man perfect!
An ideal way to improve your skills as a writer is to learn what stands to weak in it in the first place. Then fix all the glitches. The more you write, edit, proofread and rewrite, the better writer you will become.
Wrapping up
One of the best ways to improve skills as a writer is to grab the readers’ attention in the first part. Have a proper headline and the introduction catchy enough to make your readers stay till the end of your work.
Your headline and introduction will be the first things readers will see when they click on your work link. It must have the gist of the entire thing in the introduction itself.
There is never a right time to enhance your learning. So, if you are not a writer yet, pick up a paper and a pen or open up your desktop screens and start writing. And maybe you could get paid for it too!
