No one was born a great writer. Every great writer has built on his/her writing skills over time. We celebrate some great writers and bloggers today and desire to earn what they earn but we don’t realize that for them to be where they are today, many hours of hard work has gone down.
After reading my post titled “How To Know If You Can Make A Good Writer”, it is important that you know how to sharpen your writing skills. In this post, I share on ways to sharpen your writing skills and become an outstanding writer.
First of all, who is an outstanding writer?
An outstanding writer is one who everyone wants to read from; one who everyone wants to hire and is willing to pay any fees for their services; one who doesn’t have to go about looking for clients, but by virtue of his/her works, is sourced for by clients. The following will make any mediocre writer, become outstanding.
1. Research Daily
Researching daily on aspects you love to write about, is a great way to improve on your writing skills. When you research, you learn more as you get to tap into the ideas of other writers. If you are one who writes often, you will soon come to terms with the fact that your knowledge of any subject is very limited and needs to be broadened. You come to this realization only when you research and to solve this problem is by researching.
Make sure you read at least two to three articles daily, on the subject on which you write, and before you write on any topic, make sure you do good research on it.
2. Specialize
To be a good writer, it is very important that you have a specialty. When you try to know and write about everything, you are known for nothing and truly you are good at nothing. As a writer, specialization is very important to make your audience trust your knowledge in a particular subject. If you came across a medical doctor who claims to be a good engineer and accountant at the same time, you will surely doubt his/her credibility. This is so too with writing.
Choose a subject and build your knowledge and experience around it. Focus on that subject and make it your specialty. People will trust you more in that subject.
3. Write More
The greatest way to improve your skills on anything is to exercise it the more. When you write more, your writing skills get better and better and vice-versa. I have noticed that since I started writing, I am not only getting better in my ability to pass across my ideas but also in my typing speed. This means I am a better writer just by writing more and more articles daily. Make writing a habit, whether there is a writing job to meet up with or not. Don’t ever write enough. Write and keep writing. The more you write, the better you get.
4. Be Consistent
Consistency is a very important aspect in anything a person does. When you are consistent, you can be trusted. An inconsistent writer cannot be trusted because it is hard to say if he/she will perform well tomorrow. As a writer, set a standard today that beats that of yesterday and keep improving. Don’t ever drop the standards. If your audience knows you for something, let them not get the opposite the next time they read your work. Let them see more of what you are known for. Be consistent in your style, your voice, your ideas and your quality.
5. Set Targets
One sure way to improve on your writing skills is to target yourself. Setting targets will keep you disciplined and you will achieve more. Whether you have a client to write for or not, target yourself. When you have no targets to meet, you will relax a lot and write at your convenience and this will not make you a great writer. You want to become outstanding? Set reading and writing targets. Target yourself to read a specific number of articles on a specific topic, each week. Also target yourself to write a specific number of articles on a particular subject, every week. Strive to meet your target
6. Improve Daily
In order to become outstanding, you should work hard and make sure you improve on your skills daily. Read other people’s works, not only for the purpose of research but also to see the way they present their facts and their usage of the language and use this to improve on your writings daily. Let people who read your works be able to witness maximum improvement in the way you write. In short, don’t be the same writer you were, yesterday. Set new standards for yourself daily.
7. Get Criticized
Wise people learn from criticism, positive or negative. One way to improve on your ability to do anything is to surround yourself with people who can analyze and critic your works. Surround yourself with friends who are interested to see that you grow in your writing skills and every now and then, let them review your works. You will learn so much from them if they are frank with you. But not everything they say should you heeded. Just be keen to consider their opinions, improve and move on.
8. Attend Workshops
Attending workshops and conferences can be a great way to grow in your writing career, building on your skills. There are workshops every now and then for writers, bloggers, freelancers, English users, etc. and also workshops on the subjects which you write about. These workshops offer wonderful opportunities for writers to learn and improve on their writing skills.
Attend workshops every month and share in the wealth of knowledge and experiences of people who know better. The number of workshops you attend can never be too much. You will always benefit something, if not knowledge, then professionalism.
It is not just important that you discover your writing skills but that you sharpen them and make yourself an outstanding writer, in order to make good income from writing. The above are a few ways to improve on your writing skills and I know you will go ahead to make use of them. Let me read your comment below if you have any.
By Kadzem Claude
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ReplyDeleteI see. But you should also be commenting about the write up ok?
DeleteYour site is super excellent. All the articles are very interesting and educative, I cant wait to become a writer, honestly speaking I am inspired with " How to become an Outstanding and Effective Writer. Thank you very much I look forward to read more from you and go ahead to be come a contributor, once again thanks
ReplyDeleteThanks. If writing is some things you do with much ease, I will encourage you to waste no time in becoming a professional writer.
DeleteWriting is all about achieving flow. It can be difficult to shift back and forth between writing and other tasks. Most poor writers use more words than they need. If you understand a topic, you should be able to communicate it concisely.
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