3 Tips for Better Writing

Have you heard the secret to writing well is reading often? How about the saying, An apple a day keeps the doctor away? So does a book a day keep the red pen away? Relax. That's actually a trick question. The red pen should be the last of our writing concerns.

1. Are we thinking well?

     There's no shortcuts. Writing well is hard work because we use writing to communicate our thoughts. We use writing to communicate our thoughts! Writing is already one step removed from our thoughts! If we are lazy with our thoughts, we can expect our writing to be a snooze, too.
    
     I often wonder how people would respond if we started asking one another if we are good mathematicians in the same way we ask one another whether or not we are good writers. In a strange way, we think of writing as belonging to everyone (which it does). But is it this train of thought that leads us to believe that writing well should also be easy for everyone? Not true! Even professional writers write multiple drafts of texts and work with an editor! Personally, I have never heard a writer say that writing is easy for her or him. Usually, writers snort at the question. It's hard work.
     
     Writing is like playing a game with our thoughts and we only have so many symbols to communicate. Writing at its best is thinking well and thinking well is not easy. Writing well is not easy. So what do we do? We work at it without telling ourselves or others that we aren't smart if we find writing hard. It should be hard. If it is not difficult, we may not be thinking.
    
     Writing prompt: Read a well-written, in-depth article about a scientific discovery that interests you and apply that knowledge to something you have experienced personally. (The more unrelated the two subjects are the better.) Then write about how the former sheds light on the latter.

2. Read fiction.

     A love of reading will carry writers far. In the same way we shouldn't judge our writing skills at every step, we shouldn't judge ourselves too harshly as readers.

     I have had students tell me at the start of a writing course that they are not good writers. When I ask them how it is that they are so certain they are not good writers, some have said it was because they were not good at something called “reading comprehension” because they performed poorly on x,y, or z standardized test. (Argh. Standardized tests. The king of all red pens. Just to be clear: I do not recommend reading for reading comprehension. If you must, go the other way and read incomprehensible writing. You're more likely to learn something.)

     After talking with these students more, I found that some of them were reading fiction, and furthermore, when they could write in a more narrative way, they often felt more confident in their writing abilities and felt they could express their thoughts better in writing. If you love studying narratives are much as I do, this discovery may not surprise you. Writing an academic paper is simply one way of writing a story. Writing fiction is another way of writing a story. Being empowered to write in one genre can lead to being empowered to write in another.

     So what do we do to improve our writing overall?

     Write fiction. Better yet, try to solve a real-life conundrum you are having with a two-character dialogue. Yes, that's right, outsource your real-life, heavy duty problems to fictional characters, preferably argumentative fictional characters with a long-standing beef. Why not let them chew on your problems for you for awhile? At the very least, you'll get a chuckle. At the most, you will arrive at a surprising solution. In other words, solve problems by writing without being terrorized by the myth of the five-paragraph essay or the ghosts of standardized tests.

 

3. Resist the urge to proofread.

     Remember how writing well is thinking well? When you are trying to say something important, do you get frustrated when people interrupt you? When we think of fixing writing, we often look for grammatical mistakes and spelling errors, and we feel pretty good about correcting them on the spot.


     But correcting all of those mistakes when we are writing a first draft is counterproductive. We are interrupting our thought process unnecessarily. Such a situation is similar to going up to tell someone you love them only to have that person correct your grammar. (It's only three words, but still.)


     We get anxious to write well and we take out the red pen and dash away, but the problem is we aren't done thinking yet, and the thinking is what is going to make our writing worth reading, and that type of writing is messy for awhile. Be cool with the messiness and the multiple drafts. I think we like to proofread as soon as possible because it is more or less a pretty clear cut process and we want to get down to business! We care about things such as reading comprehension! But proofreading won't make a good piece of writing great.


     So what do we do? When you think you are ready to proofread a piece of text, don't. Instead, write one more draft. (I told you writing was hard!) After you write that draft, skim it. Pinpoint the most interesting section. Is some of it newly written? If so, you still aren't ready to proofread!

Shannon Mullally has a doctorate in Creative Writing and loves food studies. Find Shannon on twitter @SMMullally.