3 Tips For Improving Your Creative Writing Skills

As a writer, improving your skills should be a fairly continuous process. Honing your ability so that your prose becomes the best it can be should be your ultimate aim. However, it’s easy for things to get a little stale, particularly if you haven’t written for a while.
There are three easy and convenient ways that I teach my students to improve their writing. These are:
Keep a notebook
Possibly the simplest yet most effective way of improving your writing is to keep a notebook. Use it every day. Take it wherever you go. Buy as cheap or expensive a notebook as you like. The point of the notebook is not to fill it with great thoughts. It’s to capture the ideas that fly past on the spur of the moment – ideas that are all too easily forgotten by the time that you’ve finished work, done the shopping and picked up the kids. Use it for character ideas – check out your fellow passengers on the bus / train – could any of them provide you with inspiration? Use it to scribble down article ideas, story ideas, anything in fact that could be useful to you in the future. Your notebook goal is not to fill it with carefully ordered text but for it to end up bursting with a plethora of ideas that will aid you in your writing.
Consistency
Again, a tremendously simple idea that is more effective than people give it credit for! Make time to write every day, even if it’s for ten minutes, half an hour, an hour. Whatever you can fit in. If you can, schedule it for the same time each day. I’ve heard all the excuses in the world about this stifling your creativity but truthfully, if you sit around waiting for the muse to show up then you’ll never write a single word. However, commit to writing every day and your mind will get to work and it will become a habit. I have a student that gets up at 5am every morning to write for two hours before she has to leave for work. Easy? Undoubtedly not. Committed? Definitely.
Use Your Imagination
You do have one, right? As a writer, your imagination is your best friend. Be nice to it, nurture it, let it wander. Rediscover the joy of daydreaming, let your mind drift and see where it takes you and the ideas it conjures up. A word of advice with this one though – try not to be too stressed when you try daydreaming – it’s difficult to let things go when you’ve got kids screaming at you, phones ringing and deadlines to meet!
I hope you find these tips useful, I’d love to hear your feedback – you can leave your comments on my website, the address is below.