One Crucial Tip That Will Improve Your Writing

Look at the shelves of your local bookstore, or on Amazon.com, and you’ll see dozens of books on the art of writing. Each contains specific and powerful advice from a range of successful authors. Any aspiring writer would do well to read at least one of them. But at some point they become too much. There’s just too much information to digest for anyone to absorb it all. Even after mastering the basics, writers need to focus only on two things: reading and writing.

The reading aspect sometimes gets neglected. Yes, we all read blogs on the internet, but that’s simply not enough for an aspiring writer. Anyone who wants to do this seriously, whether for a hobby or professionally, has to step up their reading game. It means not just reading more, but reading wider. It’s one surefire way to improve your writing.

Reading outside your field

Chances are, you have a list of go-to sites. These might be in the form of an RSS reader, they might be bookmarks, or they might just be sites you visit on a daily basis. These are, in all likelihood, well-written sites that are at the tops of their fields. There’s nothing wrong with reading these. In fact, if they’re in your desired field they’re probably required reading. But if they’re all you read, you’ll never get better.

If you’re a tech writer, you might have to scale back your tech reading. Why? So you can read blogs in other fields. Even though you’re shooting for a tech-centric audience, you don’t want to sound like every other tech blog out there. If the idea is to stand out and to show people that you can provide a different type of content, then reading different types of content becomes key to your success.

Expand your exposure to good writing. Add some arts and culture blogs to your mix. Read some of the better-written sports blogs. Essentially, read any blog in any field that prides itself on good writing. These blogs will give you different ideas of writing then you’re currently getting from blogs in your field.

Change the medium

While anyone who writes blogs must read other blogs, that shouldn’t be the only item on their reading diets. In order to grow as writers we must grow as readers. That means getting off the internet and getting into some print publications. That means adding newspapers, magazines, and especially books to your daily reading regimen.

Many of these media are available right on your computer. Almost every newspaper has a website, and many of them offer free access. You can read the paper here, or you can take a break from the computer and read them at your local library. Ditto magazines. Magazines are quite important for a blogger, since a blog is in many ways a condensed magazine. Physical magazines will help you familiarize yourself with long-form pieces. Since they require different writing skills then short-form blog posts, you’re guaranteed to learn something.

Books, however, are the most important media. They’re written in styles completely different than blog posts. Great care is taken in their organization. They go through multiple editors before hitting the shelves. They are, in other words, the most polished form of writing. If you’re a blogger and you’re not reading at least one book per month, whether fiction or nonfiction, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

Take to the skies

The above reading suggestions are relatively cheap. If you have a free local library, that’s all you need. Even if you have to buy some books and magazines, they’re no hefty investment. Stick with them and you’re bound to improve. Yet there is another step you can take that, while expensive, can expand your horizons.

Every year there are hundreds of industry conferences around the country. Some of them are for writing, but some of them are for different industries. Many of them offer free admission for media entities. If you can convince the conference representative to let you in for free with a media credential, then you only have to worry about flight and hotel. Even then, you can find cheap tickets on many travel websites. The experience itself can provide a return on investment.

This comes from personal experience. Conferences bring together people of all stripes, and we stand to learn much from everyone we meet. At conferences there are chances to meet people one-on-one at booths and other social places. There are typically panels in which industry buffs dispense information. Chances are you’ll return home not only more knowledgeable than before, but brimming with ideas for your blog.

(As a bonus, the flight and any downtime will give you ample chances to get in some more reading.)

Reading more blogs, newspapers, magazines, and books is relatively easy if you have the motivation. It can be a downright pleasure, too. As Stephen King said in his writing memoir, On Writing, consider this permission to read as much as you want, whenever you want. As you read you’ll pick up on unfamiliar sentence structures, and you’ll see how different ones fit together. You’ll also get plenty of ideas that you wouldn’t get by just reading in your field. You can cross these ideas with other ideas and create something completely new. So not only will your writing improve, but your ideas will too. It all adds up to a much improved blogger who is bound to attract a greater audience.

Joe Pawlikowski is the editor of Prepaid Reviews.

Tagged as: content writing, writing skills, writing tips

Article by Joe Pawlikowski

Joe has written 5 articles .

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