Maybe you have listened somewhere that writing is very tough and everyone can’t do it. But I would say that writing is not rocket science and anyone can do it. However, if you are not a writing expert by birth then of course you need to start, learn and improve your writing skills.
Before 2019, I had a myth in my mind also that writing is very tough and I can’t do it. When I wrote my first article, it was really very tough for me and it took more than 10 days to write a single article.
And it was very annoying for me. Again and again, I was doing self-talk like: writing is not for me and it is for the people who are only experts.
But after writing 3 to 4 articles on my first website in early 2020, I realized that if I do some practice and activities, then writing is possible.
And I stopped my all self-negative talk about writing and deleted all my doubts, and fears from my mind. I started doing writing practice and some other activities related to writing.
After a few days of time, I noticed that it was working for me and my writing was improving. I would say one quote here “SHARP YOUR SKILLS, BE BETTER EVERY DAY”
Like me, there are many people who want to write but have so many kinds of fears, self-doubts, and lack of guidance. And that is why I am writing this article so that I can help those people, who want to improve their writing skills.
Let’s have a detailed version of some tips to improve writing skills. I am sure, that if you follow these tips, your writing skills will definitely improve.
1- Overcome Your Fear of Writing
This is the first and most important thing which you have to remove from your mind. You have to cross this bridge of fear anyhow. Either you want to become a writer or you want to do something else, if you have a fear of that, you can’t win the game.
Do you remember your childhood when you did cycling for the first time? Do you think, it was scary when you did cycling for the first time. I think it was. But you did it. Why? Because you were interested enough to do that and you overcame your fear.
Exactly, you need to apply here also. You have to make yourself interested enough to write. And it will help you overcome your fear easily. You have to remember one thing: “You have to take some risk”.
Every profession has its own kind of risk. You just need to be prepared and careful. If you want to be a writing expert, decide it and block all your fears immediately.
You should just start writing and learn every day. You can start and improve your writing skills anytime.
2- Develop an “I Can Write” Attitude
According to me, the second most important point for every writer should be the “I Can Write” attitude. You have to develop this attitude within you anyhow. After it, you will see a fantastic change in your writing.
You will feel more confident and will put in all the required effort automatically. See. if you think, you can’t write, it will not work out. But if you have a kind of burning desire and an attitude toward writing, you will rock.
Yes, it may take some time to be a rock in writing, but if you have a fire within you to write, you can do it.
Whatever the goal you want to achieve even related to anything, you have to have a clear goal and passion to achieve it. That’s why you need to feel from within as:
- “I can write”
- “I can do it”
- “Writing is possible”
- “Everyone can write”
- “Writing is not rocket science”
So on and so forth. There might be many positive thoughts, you can repeat and develop within you. I guess you would also agree that it will help you to improve your writing skills.
3- Reading Every Day is Important
I think every writer must be a good reader. Some people may differ from this opinion, but I would say that “Reading is the backbone of writing”.
You can ask any writing experts, and most of them would answer that reading is important. If you read regularly, you will gain so much. These gains may be in the form of:
- Learning
- Knowledge
- New ideas
- New concepts
- Learning power words and phrases
- Presentation
- Motivation and inspiration
- Writing ideas
There is no limit to gain from reading. It is up to you what you read and how much you read. If you ask me. I would say you should explore multiple things. You should read books, magazines, articles, short stories, etc.
4- “Practice” is Basic to Improve Writing Skills
You can think of anything like cricket, football, archery, boxing, judo, or even writing. Practice can make you extraordinary in whatever profession you choose. If you do regular practice with complete focus, you can win the battle.
Imagine, you want to learn archery or let’s say swimming. Do you think you can do it without practice? I don’t think so. Yes, there might be some exceptions in the world.
But for most people who are new to archery or swimming, there will be a need for regular focus and the right practice.
This is applicable, in writing as well. If you are new to writing, you should do a lot of practice. Practicing work for you or not, you can check it through yourself also. You can follow these steps as an example to check it”.
This session will take 32 days. On the first day of writing, Practice day 1 to Practice day 30 and Writing on the last day of the session.
- Take a piece of the blank page and write 1000 words on any topic randomly and put a date on the top of the page.
- Now do a regular one-hour writing practice every day. You can choose any topic randomly for every day.
- After 30 days of practice, you take another blank page and write 1000 words on the same topic which you wrote on the first day or you can choose another topic as well.
- Now compare your page: The first page which you wrote on the very first day and the page which you write on your last day.
You will notice a lot of changes in your writing. You will notice that your writing flow, words, sentences, paragraphs, heading, etc have improved.
If will do the writing practice further, you will notice that day by day your writing is improving. Yes, the practice of writing can improve writing skills. It is true.
5- Know Your “Why” of Writing
If you don’t have interested in the work you choose, very soon you will become bored. At the same time, If you are not having enough interest and love in your work, you would not be able to utilize your full potential.
There are two ways:
- First, You do your work due to some helplessness or due to some pressure.
- The second is, that you do the work with interest and love.
What do you say, which one is the best way to achieve goals and utilize your full potential. I guess, you say, the second option. Right?
I would say the same. For this love and interest in writing, you have to understand your why.
You need to ask these questions yourself and answer also:
- Why do you want to write?
- What are the benefits you are going to get from good writing? Benefits might be in terms of money, fame, recognition, people satisfaction, etc. It is totally up to you what you want.
- What do you want to write?
- Who is going to read you?
See, without knowing your goal and motivation, it is not going to work out easily. I am saying all these in this article because all these are important to improve writing skills.
6- Drafting, First Write, and Edit later
When I started writing, I used to do a lot of mess and that used to consume a lot of time. I used to do everything simultaneously like writing, editing, sentence changes, image creation, and other works.
But after sometimes I realized that it is not the right way to write. And, I have to be organized. I decided that first of all I will complete my writing and then I will do editing later.
I was surprised, It saved a lot of time. Actually what happens is, when you write something, you be in a flow. But when you start editing in between, it breakdown your flow.
Some people may have some different opinions also. And might writing and editing simultaneously may work for them also. But most good writers or experts will recommend you to DRAFT YOUR WRITING FIRST AND EDIT LATER.
I am also following the same process and I have seen positive results in my writing. It really improves writing skills.
You can try both scenarios and see what works better in your case. Here are both the cases:
Write your draft first and Edit later.
Write and edit simultaneously.
I guess, the first option would work better and will save you a lot of time and also improve your writing skills.
7- Start With a Small Piece of Content
If you are a beginner, You should focus on a small piece of content. In the beginning, you can start practicing with small content. It can be of 400 words count or 600 words count.
When you become confident, slowly and gradually, you try to increase the length of your content. After a few days of doing this activity, one day you will find that you are able to write lengthy content also.
Writing a lengthy article of 2000 or 3000 words count may be tough in the initial phase. if you don’t have writing skills, writing content of 1000 words count may also not be easy.
Initially, you should focus to sharpen your writing skills rather than content length.
8- Concept of Your Topic and Knowledge
One of the major elements in your writing is your topic. You need to understand the concept of your topic. Maybe you want to write an article or book or a social media caption, etc.
Every topic has its own importance and demand. You have to understand and explore your topic well. After knowing your topic well, you can represent it well to your readers.
For example, you want to write an article on SSL Certificate.
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Can you write about it if you don’t have any idea about SSL Certificate and have not explored this before. First, you need to have the knowledge and understand the concept of the topic.
In short, you have to gain as much as knowledge you can about the niche or subject, then you would be able to express it in the form of content.
9- Don’t Get Nervous From Criticism
Writing is a creative profession. And you need to be patient enough and have to be creative. But there is one thing that exists in our society and that is criticism. You have to be ready for it every time.
Some people may like your writing and you as a writer and some people may not. It is very rare that everyone loves your written content and loves you as a writer.
Some people may criticize you and or your written content as well. But you have to develop a shell around you and you should not let them impact you.
You have to be strong, especially, at the beginning of your writing career when you also may think that your writing is not good enough.
I would advise you following points to remember:
- Be focused on your writing journey.
- Be strong enough.
- Have trust and confidence in yourself.
- Avoid self-criticism.
- Trust your willpower.
- Be prepared for every good or bad situation.
- Treat every criticism as an opportunity.
In my opinion, willpower can do anything. You need to stick to your willpower and enhance it every day. If you have trust and confidence in your writing, people will also have the same.
I would say, treat your every criticism and negative feedback as an opportunity. And use it to improve writing skills.
10- Use Writing Tools
Somewhere, you can make your writing easier. How? There are multiple writing tools and software available that can help you in your writing.
Grammarly is one of the famous tools for writing. I am also using it in my writing process. It helps me in proofreading and editing my content.
If you do grammatical and spelling mistakes, writing tools like Grammarly can help you a lot. However, there are other tools are also available. You can use the best suitable of your choice.
These tools can be helpful beyond grammar and spelling mistakes also. You can take the free or premium versions. It is totally up to your need.
11- Dedicated Time to Improve Writing Skills
Effective writers know to manage time for their writing works. Writing is creative work and you need to put in dedicated time for it. You can make a proper schedule for it.
Suppose you want to write an article of 2000 words count. You can follow the following steps to manage a dedicated time for it.
- First of all, do forecasting your total time. I mean you make an idea, that how much time will you take to write an article of 2000 words counts. (I am talking about purely for writing not editing)
- Make a schedule of time. You are a morning writer or evening writer. Or you are comfortable writing any time a day.
- Book yourself for a particular time. For example, you will take four hours to write 2000 Words. Now you need to have a dedicated time of 4 hours for your writing. Yes of course you may take some break in between your writing. So should also add that time to your total time.
Guys, this is just an example. Timing, schedule, and other things can vary from person to person. In short, I want to say only that, there should be a proper dedicated time for your writing.
So that you can invest that time properly and write effectively. As I earlier said, the focus is a very important part. That’s why whatever total time you write, be focused and be inflow. It will really help to improve my writing skills.
12- Preparation – Writing Structure and Outline
The preparation you do before you start writing is a very crucial part and its plays an important role to improve your writing skills. How?
Let’s assume you want to go from Delhi to Jaipur by car. What will you do? I think before you start going towards Jaipur, you will do all the needful preparation.
In writing also, you need to go for proper preparation, so that when you sit for the writing, you just be focused on writing only. And you be able to complete your job within the time limit and effectively.
Here are my few suggestions which you may follow if they sound good to you.
- Prepare your desk. Remove uneccesory stuff like mobile, etc from your desk that may distract you in between your writing.
- Create an outline structure of your topic.
- Create your headings and subheadings.
- Prepare the images and or infographics that you want to include in your article.
- Keep handy all your supporting material like a research paper, etc.
- Have proper structure and outline of your article. So that you know what you want to write and how much to write.
See, if you have all the stuff ready before you start the actual writing, you will have a proper framework. And you will be in flow while writing. It will help you to write effectively.
13- Write Content for Readers, Not for Search Engines
If you are running a blog or website, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is very important. But at the same time, it is more important that all the articles are written for your audience.
If your audience is not liking your content, then there is no meaning in search engine optimization. Why? Because:
- Maybe initially you get a good ranking in search engines on behalf of your good SEO. But when search engine will see that people are not linking your content, your ranking will drop down.
- The search engine would not like to give a good ranking if the contents are not good. Ultimately, every search engine will see their customer satisfaction.
- If visitors would not like your content, they will not revisit your site. And this is not good for your site.
You should always be focused on your audience and write your articles for them not for the search engine. Your audience and SEO both are important. But you should give first priority to your audience and second priority to your Search Engine.
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14- Follow Some Good Writers or Bloggers
This is my personal suggestion that you should be in touch with some other writers and or good bloggers as well. If can’t be in touch with them personally. You should follow some good writers and top blog owners.
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It will give some inspiration and will motivate you several times in your writing journey. If you will read their content, you get so much knowledge also. And you will have an idea, of how they are successful.
It will also help you to find out your mistakes and find out improvement areas in your career.
The good part is, that it will always give you positive vibes and you will have positive energy as well. You can also take some guidance from other bloggers and writers to improve your writing skills.
15- Block All Your Distractions – Be in Flow
“Distraction destroys everything”. Just imagine, a person is driving a car in a race, and suddenly he got a call on his phone which is kept on aside in his car. What would be the situation?
He is driving his car and his phone is ringing. Can he concentrate on his race? I don’t think so. You can imagine this situation for anyone like fo a Swimmer, or a player who is playing cricket or football.
I am not comparing writing with race or with any game. I just won’t say that a big concentration is required in writing as well. If you will get distracted again and again while doing your writing work. It will be tough to be productive.
Whatever total time you write, your total focus should be on the work only. It is also the kind of race where you need more attention.
If you will break your attention in between again and again you would lose momentum. And momentum is very important to being an effective writer.
I would suggest, you should be off from some distractions like friends, mobile notifications, parties, and other temptations.
Yes of course if something is more important than your writing, then, of course, you should give it a priority.
In short, this quote can explain everything, “Less distraction, More productivity”.
16- Meditation and Silence
Maybe it is not looking linked with writing skills. But believe me, it can be a miracle for you and very helpful in your writing. Meditation and being in silence for some time will give you the thing you can’t imagine.
If you still not doing any kind of meditation. Just do a meditation practice of 30 minutes every day for the next 30 days.
Believe me, you would feel changes in yourself. It will increase your focus level and energy level.
You will see the effect in your writing as well. You will see yourself as more creative and you will be able to give undistracted time to your work.
It is not healthy for your writing only, even it will benefit your everyday life and will improve your health also.
I think Meditation and exercise should be an important part of everyday life for everyone. It will change our own lives and also will improve society’s mindset also.
17- Internship or an Online Course
Writing is very creative work and there is no limit to learning about it. yes of course you can be a self-made writer. You can read articles, books, tutorials, etc, and learn a lot.
But apart from self-education, you can also join a formal online course. Or you can join an internship kind of job.
You can get some learning from formal writing education and enhance your skills. It will depend on the type of course you do. But you can learn from basics to advanced topics. And it will add value to you.
Here is a list of 2 well know sites for online courses.
There are many other sites also available on the internet. You can search for and find the best online writing courses for you. It will definitely help to improve your writing skills.
18- Free Writing Practice
Might you hear about the term “Free Writing”? It does mean that you write content for someone for free. However, freewriting is a kind of writing practice.
In this practice, you just take a random topic and start writing.
For example, You take a blank page or open a writing page on your computer and put a headline – How was my yesterday? And start writing about it. You can do it for 30 minutes or 40 minutes, etc.
You can choose any topic randomly and do this exercise regularly. It will improve your writing skills and improve your creativity as well.
I would suggest, you should choose different topics for each exercise. It will also help you to explore things. It will also make you curious to know things.
As much as you will explore your knowledge and write on multiple topics, it will improve your writing skills.
19- Consistency Improves Writing Skills
Without consistency nothing big is possible. Either you want to make a six-pack personality or want to be a good athlete or even a writer.
You have to be consistent in your work whatever the work you do. If you want to achieve great success then consistency is the key element.
Reading and writing practice are two very important aspects to improve writing skills. But what if you read 3 to 4 days in a month only or do writing practice 3 to 4 days randomly in a month.
Do you think it will work out? I don’t think so. You need to be consistent. You should do the practice regularly then it will help you effectively.
If you want to improve your writing skills and want to be an effective writer, then write regularly.
If you are a beginner, you have to be even more focused and consistent. Because you are in your learning phase and you are aligning towards writing. However, it doesn’t mean that an expert should not be consistent.
Consistency is important for everyone.
20- Headings and Sub-Headings
As you can see there are multiple headings and subheadings in this article. I have explained each aspect to improve writing skills through different heads.
And it is easier to read for my audience as well. But there is another aspect also and that is from the writing point of view.
Let’s understand with this example:
Assume that you want to write an article on the “Computer” topic. Take a blank page and put only one heading as Computer. And write your complete article under this head only.
Now assume a second situation. Take a blank page and put the main heading as Computer and write Hardware, Sofware, RAM, ROM, Mouse, Keyboard, CPU, Monitor, etc your other subheadings.
Now tell me, in which scenario you would be able to write more content and effectively. I guess your answer is the second one.
Yes, headings and subheadings are good parts to represent and explain your content well. This is beneficial for both readers and writers.
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21- Review Your Writing Level
If you don’t have a track record of your work, how would you know the difference between starting level and the current level?
It is applicable in this profession as well. You should review your writing level periodically. So that you know where you stand now.
You should evaluate both your inputs and output both. We can’t blame to results if we do not put in sufficient inputs.
The output will always depend on the raw material you put in. Raw materials like writing practice, reading, consistency, focus, time, etc.
You can track your every input and review your writing level every 15 days or 30 days. Evaluation timing can be anything as per your choice. My main purpose to explain this is only to let you know the importance of evaluation.
Conclusion
Starting anything is always tough. Whether you want to learn horse riding or swimming, it is going to be tough at the starting time. If you are new to writing and don’t have that skill, it may be tough in starting.
But it is not forever. You can improve your writing skills anytime. If you follow the above tips, it can be easy and you can improve your writing skills.
But yes of course you need to be curious and dedicated to it. And you have to give time to get success.
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