Empower Your Writing!

So you want to enhance your writing skills, but don’t know where to start? Well, here are some pointers that will help get you started:

1.      Read something that is well written.  To be a better writer, you have to read what others have written, preferably, high quality content. Why? Because this helps to improve your writing style tremendously. Some places you can look to include Harvard Business Review, New York Times, The Washington Post, etc.  

2.      Read something funny. Most of my writing is relatively serious. However, I find that when I read something humorous it shakes up my brain and loosens up my creativity. So, every now and then I check out Buzzfeed and others.

3.      Read something outside your niche. As a romantic suspense writer, I expand my reading to include books on a wide variety of subjects including non-fiction books. I find that the style and the author’s approach helps me within my own writing niche.

4.      Read something you wrote in the past. You’d be surprised how much you can learn from reading something you’ve written in the past. Every now and then I re-read some of my past blog posts and compare them to my current blog posts. After assessing what was good, not so good and what worked, I’m amazed how much better I’ve become as a writer.

5.      Speed writing. Don’t worry about punctuation, grammar, typos, etc. – just write and see some of the good stuff you can come up with. You can always edit later.

6.      Google any grammar questions. If you don’t have a good book about grammar at your fingertips, then do a Google search to make sure you’re not breaking any grammar laws.

Note: Remember writing is a journey…so keep empowering your skills!