In a post on the BookBaby blog, Janna Lopez discusses various habits and techniques that can help writers improve their writing skills. Lopez suggests a few exercises you can try to boost your confidence and motivation:
- Define what being “better” means to you. This exercise can help you set your intentions. Do you want to achieve personal growth or finish a certain project? Do you want to master a specific skill or become a part of a writing community? Knowing what you want to achieve is a strong first step to getting there.
- Define what stops your writing flow. Writers are a procrastinating lot, but knowing the origin of your blocks can help you overcome them. “The things that stop flow are not always so deep or heavy,” Lopez says. “Sometimes it may be residual red-pen marks from teachers that haunt us. Or maybe you don’t think your writing is ‘good enough.'”
- Get out of your rut. “If you truly want your writing to grow, or move into surprising new directions, approaching it in new ways is required,” Lopez says. Write using a different perspective or in a different genre or form, just enough to shake up your thinking.
- Write without editing. Writing with editing can interrupt your flow and even derail your train of thought entirely. Spend more of your writing time writing and leave a few minutes at the end to re-read your work and fix grammar and spelling.
- Replace writing expectations with invitations. Remind yourself that you don’t “have to” write; you get to write. “There’s no joy when you dread the process,” Lopez says. “There’s no inspiration when we feel like crap about ourselves because we didn’t get to those 1,000 words. How can we improve or get better when there’s zero incentive to progress?”
