Improve Your Writing: Do it Daily

photo credit: combust

Last week I shared five quick and dirty ways to improve your writing. Today, I want to share with you why the number one tip on that list was write every single day.

I started out writing poetry just before I hit my teens. Writing was a sacred outlet, and I poured my dreams, frustrations, and desires onto the pages of my notebook. During those years, I developed a very unhealthy attitude about writing, one that I believe many young or new writers cling to — that talent is all that matters. You had it or you didn’t, and it never occurred me that something that required talent would also benefit from hard work. So, I wrote, but only when I felt like it. Weeks would go by and I wouldn’t write a word, and then in just a few days, I’d half fill a notebook with my amateur poetry.

By the time high school was over, my belief in talent and the habit I’d developed for writing only on a whim or whenever the fancy struck me were embedded into my thinking and my behavior. Later, my whole perception of writing would be shaken.

Eventually I entered the creative writing program at university. For the first time in my life, writing was more than a casual fling; it started to become challenging. Surrounded by peers of equal or even greater talent, I started pushing myself. I started wanting to be a better writer — a talented writer, yes, but also a developed one. My coursework required that I write constantly. In one semester I would have anywhere from two to four writing classes, with lots of homework and plenty of projects, which kept me busy writing — every single day.

Immediately, I began to see a change in my own work, a shift. The poetry I wrote was consistently better than what I’d written the day before. My short stories, once flat and boring, started to take on some life, and my essays, which had always been strong, reached new levels.

There were many reasons for this rapid growth. I learned the value of editing, of being a choosy reader, of using resources, like books that were packed with writing exercises designed to improve different aspects of my writing or help me discover new terrain in my work, and the feedback of peer reviews and critiques were all invaluable. But these practices ebbed and flowed. One course would be heavy with peer reviews, and other courses wouldn’t involve them at all. Some instructors liked to see the raw footage, the unedited stuff, others made you proofread and revise incessantly. One thing, however, was completely consistent. I had to write every single day.

It was this practice of making writing a daily habit, a priority in my life, that I feel had the greatest impact.

There are thousands of tips out there for how to be a better writer. You’ve all read the books, or at least heard of them. There are articles and lists, web sites (yes, like this one), and short courses that say do this, do that, write sideways or upside down. Write in a park, or try a cafe, use a thesaurus, burn the thesaurus… All of that advice does have value. Sometimes you’ll find a golden tip that works perfectly for you but it’s rare for those tips to prove helpful for everyone. Only a very few bits of advice are truly applicable to every writer across the board, and writing daily is first and foremost among them.

It almost seems obvious if you think about it. You want to be a writer, so uh — yeah — you should write. A lot. Yet many don’t. Are there a few extra specially talented writers out there who can just produce mind boggling work without practicing regularly? Of course, they’re prodigies. Should you let a day go by without writing a single word? Yes, occasionally, that’s probably a good thing to do. A little break now and then can give you some perspective. But for the most part, writing every day is what will make you grow consistently, and it will help you become the best writer you can possibly be. And that’s what we all want, right?

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