Goals to Improve Writing
Whether you have a story inside you itching to be told, or a compulsion to write, putting pen to paper does not come easily or naturally to everyone. For most, writing is a skill that must be studied and practiced. Those who yearn to better their writing skills can set several goals for themselves that will help them to hone their skills and improve their writing.
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Become a Creature of Habit
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In order to improve your writing, you must treat it like a job -- even if you already have a full time job. Create a space in your home, such as a desk, or a comfortable chair with a lap desk, that you go to at a specific time for a specified amount of time to write. Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler explains in his book on the writing process, "From Where You Dream," that this creates what "psychologists used to call 'functional fixedness.' . . . if you have a certain place and certain objects that you associate only with a certain task, eventually the associational values build up in such a way that when you go to that place and engage those objects, you are instantly completely focused on that task."
Train Your Mind
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Just like you would train your body to run a marathon, you must train your mind to write, and to write well. There are a number of books on the market with activities that writers can do to help them improve their craft. These books discuss the writing process and set forth tasks for writers to accomplish. "Writing Fiction" by Janet Burrows is one craft guide widely used in university fiction classes, and "The Poet's Companion" by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux is its poetry workshop counterpart. Completing the activities detailed in these books and others, even when they do not look like the type of writing you do, will help you to improve your overall writing skills.
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Read Everything
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Reading is a great way to improve your writing. In fact, Melissa Donovan, founder of Writing Forward, insists that reading is the most important thing a writer can do. Reading helps you to develop a familiarity with language that is easier learned than drilling yourself with grammar quizzes, and is much more enjoyable. If you are working on a genre-specific project, immerse yourself in that genre by reading similar works. This will switch your mind into that mode without so much extra work on your part. Do not limit yourself to your specialty on a regular basis, however. Reading a range of genres helps to diversify your personal writing skills.
Write Every Day
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Butler says that it is crucial that writers write every day. Writing on a daily basis keeps your mind open and allows you easier access to the place you go to pull forth those ideas that will become your work. This hearkens back to the notion that you should become a creature of habit. If you write every day, the process becomes easier, and thus allows you to begin to improve. You don't necessarily have to write anything of importance on a daily basis. Simply journaling your day is enough to keep those skills sharpened.
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References
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