Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills

It’s not a huge revelation that the way to improve your writing skills and perfect them to their fullest potential, is to practice as much as possible. All writers know this obvious fact but so often we tend to stop for the day if what we think we wrote was crap or fail to even start writing until we can come up with what seems like an award winning idea for the context. But if we really want to find ways to improve our writing skills, it is imperative that we constantly remind ourselves that even if we write nothing worth developing three days in a row, at lease we are getting more and more writing practice and even if it sucks, it will still without a doubt contribute to the betterment of our skills. Maybe you don’t like what you’ve written down on the paper but what you write takes thoughts and thoughts of any sort lead to more thoughts just as creativity jumpstarts creativity and if you simply relax and keep trying when you think you’ve failed, something worthy is almost guaranteed to eventually spill out onto the page.

It is hard sometimes, though, as a writer to make time to practice ways to improve your writing skills, especially if you seem to be in a writing funk. If you find yourself longing to practice writing more often but you see yourself pushing it off and procrastinating almost involuntarily for various reasons, it may be time to introduce another party into the picture. By another party, I am referring to a writing partner.

Spending time regularly writing with a writing partner is an extremely effective way to improve your writing skills. You two can plan to meet at scheduled times, whatever you are ready to commit to, and sit down at a coffee shop or perhaps a grassy area outside now that it’s nice out, and silently write individually. If this seems pointless, I assure you it is not. Having someone else there who is being productive is very motivating and it makes you want to think of all sorts of ways to improve your writing skills. It is not necessary to discuss your respective notations but if you feel comfortable with each other, doing so also is one of the best ways to improve your writing skills. Feedback is a really important part of the writing process, particularly when it comes to editing and not only can this partner of yours give you his or her own personal feedback as another established writer, but he or she may also very likely get inspired by what you have to say, and come up with even more interesting ideas for you to incorporate into your piece of writing, to which you can either take and incorporate or you can use these ideas to jumpstart your brainstorming session to think of other creative things to write.

Sharing your writing with other people is a very hard thing to do but eventually it will have to be done if you are looking for surefire ways to improve your writing skills. For if you get something published the whole world can potentially read it so it is good to get into the habit of sharing your work, even if you are embarrassed by what you think is poor quality. A fellow writer will more than understand the process of creating an initial rough draft to edit and improve from. There are ways online to easily find a writing partner, but it might be awkward to share your work with someone you barely know, especially if the content is of a sensitive nature. Furthermore, if you don’t know this person very well, as far as their personality goes, you may end up with someone who has completely different values and standards as you and therefore their critique of your piece of writing, while valid and possibly justified, may not accurately give you the kind of proper, objective feedback that you might get from someone who is of a like mind as you.

So if you can, try to find someone you know to be your writing partner. I personally write all the time with my two of my closest friends, separately. We hunt down a seat at the local coffee shop and nurse a single drink, occasionally two if we feel guilty enough, while frantically staring at and scribbling thoughts into our notebooks for sometimes as long as five or six hours. We are silent most of the time, but just having each other there knowing that both of us are working on ways to improve our writing skills at the same time, is comforting and helps to propel us forward. Not to mention there is a little guilt involved if we feel like giving up because if the other person is on a roll we don’t want to ruin their groove. So in most cases we force ourselves to get back to writing something, anything and after awhile we too get into some kind of groove.

Having a partner to sit down and spend time writing with is a very helpful way to improve your writing skills and is highly recommended for anyone at any level of writing status, be it novice or professional. Everyone can use feedback and motivation, not to mention company and companionship as the world of a writer can sometimes get lonely. You don’t have to commit to writing all the time but try to get together as often as you feel you can and chances are you will see your writing skills improve greatly and at the same time, so will increase your enthusiasm for the activity.