As an aspiring expert in all things writing, I certainly have a long way to go until I can deem professional status. However, throughout my experience of growing my own writing skills, I've developed a few tips and tricks I tend to use in any format, whether it be an academic essay, a professional email, a reflective piece, or a blog post. Sharing these with you will not only hold me accountable to focus on improving my work, but will (hopefully) also give you a simplified mini-lesson you won't hear in the classroom.
1. Make the thesaurus your new best friend.
This is my hands-down number one rule for successful writing. No reader wants to trudge through a piece full of "good"s and "really"s unless they are educated in eighth-grade language arts teaching. In this day and age, I never begin to write without my trusty thesaurus tab open on neighboring browser, prepared for whatever basic adjective is thrown at it. Or, shall I say, facile adjective. See what I did there? Sophistication immediately becomes my middle name. I'd love to be one of those people who has an overly extensive vocabulary, like Harper Lee or Ernest Hemmingway or Doctor Seuss. Okay, maybe not Doctor Seuss; he specialized in the art of simplicity. However, I am not yet that gifted, and a list of ten solid substitutes does not just arise in my mind like it's second nature. Although I will never attack a project without the big T by my side, I do believe using a thesaurus is the reason my vocabulary has grown respectively in these past few years. Even just the mere exposure to such a wide array of words has allowed my brain to shift its way of thinking, causing me to consistently question if each word placement perfectly portrays my message.
But, as amazing as the thesaurus is, I must add a disclaimer. As much as a reader does not want to trudge through their youngest cousin's middle school essays, they do not want to have to use their dictionaries religiously just to discover your point. Having two or three standout words per paragraph is a rule I like to follow; any more may overwhelm the audience and, frankly, your message may be lost in the attempt to wow. And finally, sometimes the simple choice is really the best one. In this case, bigger is not always better.
2. Resist the urge to edit.
What? Resist the urge to edit, coming from you, a hopefully soon-to-be editor of your own?
Yes, it is true. Editing is the killer of creativity and the culprit of writer's block. All of my most memorable teachers, professors, and mentors thus far have firmly stood by this rule, and after a year or so of implementing it into my writing routine, it is crystal clear why. We all begin to write something because we have a purpose. We want to share a story, relay a message to a reader, share our personal experience, make people laugh, or cause people to cry. Stopping every other second to check if you should have used a semicolon or a colon, though important, has absolutely nothing to do with the piece's original intent. You'll have plenty of time to go back and read through your article at least 30 times (more, if you're human), so there is no need to spend an extra three hours in the drafting process, screwing with your creative flow. Your right- and left-brain are two separate entities for a reason; keep it that way. They do not get along when a writer tries to use them simultaneously.
I know what you may be thinking. Some of you may only see yourselves as right-brained people who don't need or necessarily want to let their creative juices flow. Although this strategy may be more impactful for those working on imaginative pieces, I promise you it is still crucial to efficiency knocking out an informative essay or professional email. Although creativity may not be the priority for this type of work, even having an ounce of your own voice shine through is always impressive, not to mention memorable. Whether you admittedly shout it from the rooftops or disclose it in your beloved diary, we all lust after remembrance.
3. Implement a variety of sentence structures.
Picture this: It's 50 days B.C. (before Corona). You're at your friend's/dad's/coworker's celebratory brunch. You arrive on the scene, slightly exhausted with last night's makeup holding on by a thread and that new skirt you got on flash sale from H&M allowing you to feel somewhat put together. You catch a glimpse of yourself in your rearview mirror, and you are horrified to be going out in public only running on four extremely questionable hours of sleep.
Then you see it. The breakfast buffet table, full of pastries, egg casseroles, fruits, sandwiches, and french toasts, all serving to revive you from the dead. You take one bite of a cinnamon-sugar bagel and reeducate yourself on all of the glories that come with complex carbohydrates. You are yourself again, ready to take on this ever-so-beautiful Sunday morning.
What the heck did this have to do with sentence structure? I want you to think of your writing as this brunch event. Your piece before implementing new formats is you pre-nourishment: exhausted, hungry, and possibly hungover. After adding a variety of structures, you are still you, but well-fed, inviting, and refined. No one wants to talk to that girl at brunch who hasn't blinked in 20 minutes.
Now, I'm not advising you go take a crash course on independent clauses, predicates, and subordinate conjunctions. I don't even know what some of that scientifically means. Instead, I am offering the recommendation that you actively vary how you begin and end your sentences and change up their lengths. It's as simple as that. If each sentence begins with, "There is" or "I think" and is approximately the same length, no matter how strong the concept is, you will lack professionalism. Period.
Bonus: focusing on changing up your structure consequentially adds voice. And voice is key Without it, you will not be remembered by the reader, therefore, you will never fulfill that universal writer's lust.
4. Find a mentor.
No one, and I mean no one, can improve their writing without help. Being able to self-teach is an impressive skill to have, but it can only go so far until you hit a roadblock and no longer know what path to take. I personally attribute all of my writing and editing skills to my mom. As a five-star writer and editor herself, I consistently look to her to give me honest feedback on how I can raise the bar, both grammatically and creatively. She never fails to impress me with her expertise, and I strive to one day produce that effortlessly.
At school, I tend to voluntarily help out some of my friends by doing a quick edit of their paper the night before it's due. It exposes me to fresh styles of writing and develops my editing proficiency. Although editing is something I've recently added to my toolbox, I would have no clue where to start if it weren't for my mentor/mother's influence. Everything I publish goes through her first, always.
5. One word: read. Then read some more.
Read a novel, the news, an advertisement on a bus stop, a local blogger, a national blogger, an influencer's ranting Instagram post, a research portfolio on today's behavioral trends, a political campaign review, or your grandma's grocery list. Every single person who puts a pen to paper, or rather a character to a document, is a writer. Their capabilities may vary, but they almost all offer something for you to learn. Compare it to trying new cuisines: you will never know if a Moroccan dish is absolutely to die for until you are down to pop in to that chic pop-up downtown. Only then can you decide to chef it up for yourself.
In a similar manner, you will never know if you are talented at elaborate storytelling or concise data-relaying until you explore all of the options. We all have different strengths to bring to the table, hence you are doing yourself a great disservice by assuming you'll expand your skillset by riding solo.
6. The moment you feel inspired, GO.
My "thoughts" posts aren't just all coincidently written between the hours of 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. I have a habit of delving into my deepest workflows in the late-night hours, and for better or for worse, that is when my best material emerges. I am not necessarily advocating for a wonky sleep schedule, but I am rather suggesting you observe the time your mind wanders. This may be in the shower, so directly when you get out, head to the notes section of your phone, your computer browser, or the composition notebook journal on your nightstand. This may be while you're on that long-distance run, so keep a few tabs of the ideas wandering in your mind, finish up that last mile, and head to the nearest writing device. I promote such immediacy because if you do not take action right when the idea crystalizes, I promise you that nine out of ten times, you simply won't ever bring it to life. I can speak from experience: I've wanted to start my own platform for almost a year now, but because I never jumped on my first post idea immediately when it arose in my mind, the blog was never even created. About one hundred ideas are now floating in space somewhere along with the trust of our exes and the snacks dropped in the gap between the driver's seat and the center console. Similar to those tortilla chips, I'm not sure if I'll ever get my lost ideas back.
I understand it is not always practical to be able to emerge into writing mode for two hours in the midst of a long workday or while celebrating the Fourth of July. One of the easiest ways to both keep track of my ideas as well as ensure that they actually take shape is to use the "stickies" feature on my Mac (I'm sure other software have a similar program). I have a running tab of ideas ranging from one word to a paragraph long. If the idea is not too pressing and needs time to hatch, it can sit in its stickie-note cocoon for months. To stay accountable, I encourage myself to use one of these ideas per week so they don't join the rest of the dust in the universe.
This tip may lend itself more to creative writing, as informative writing usually includes a more defined structure and thorough research.
Caroline. You said instantly, and these don't seem instant.
You're correct, they don't seem instant. But they essentially can be. The next time you have an assignment, or possibly feel the urge to just write, I challenge you to use only five minutes to apply at least three of these tips. Even reading a one-minute feature article, using my old friend the big T, and implementing a few semicolons can take your piece from elementary to innovative.
Get writing and get growing, you author you.