How to Be a Better Writer: Today

My previous Sunday Specials (which can be found at the bottom of this post) all focused on the writing process. I understand how I work best, and I wanted to help you understand how you work best. Since it was me, the advice was also spooned out with humor and slight satire.

That is why when I was plotting my new Special blog series I wanted to do something serious. Seriously. I want to help you (and me) become better writers. Not tomorrow, not in six weeks, not in fifteen years from now, but WRITE now.

My How to Be a Better Writer series will consist of three Sunday blogs, all focusing on how you can be more gooder! (Snort) If you do it right, you will never stop improving as a writer. Every book I pen, every short story I force myself to type out, makes me better. That doesn’t mean you can’t get better today, because you can. Here is how:

1. Tell yourself you are going to write today—then do it. It can be anything. A blog on writing, your current wip, or even just the jotting down of a dream or what you did last night. Something, anything.

2. Learn a new word that means the same thing as another word you already use too much.

I hate reading manuscripts with the same word appearing over and over. As soon as I catch on it’s like witch nails on the chalkboard of my back.

Let me help, my new word is crux. Yes like from Harry Potter. It means essence, or soul, or the “most important part”.

3.Don’t let distractions distract you—for good. Stuff comes up. Some things in life can absolutely not be avoided. So take care of those things and sit back down and write. Sometimes it is easier to say once you have been distracted that you have already been interrupted, and it’s not worth it. It’s always worth. In the days where we all have kids, and jobs, and twitter, you should know that even if you only have five minutes, that will be five minutes you are wishing you had later.

4. Read something you didn’t write. That is longer than a Twitter of Facebook post. Again, it can be anything. A blog post (hopefully it’s one of mine), a magazine article. If you know me, you know that I am never with out a book to read for very long. Writers are readers, no exceptions.

5. Whatever you do, don’t quit early. I am a firm believer that teaching yourself habits, both good and bad, impact your writing in a major way. If you get stuck, and then stop, you are teaching yourself to quit when things get hard. That might not mean a lot of things to you now, but in the future when you might have deadlines, well what happens when you get stuck then?

If you think about writing as often as I do, you realize things. I think the number one way I can always improve me as a writer is to be more efficient at everything about it.

Need more Angela WRITE Now on writing? Check out all my post from the writing process demystified below.

#1 REM for your writing
#2 Oral Fixation
#3 To Tweet or To Not Tweet (That is the question)
#4 An inspirational post on inspiration

See you tomorrow, I am blogging about writing personalities.