Education Writing Skills - Improve Your Writing Skills

Every budding writer shares common fears or rather insecurities. One statement that is often made goes along the lines of this: My writing is too bad for anyone to want to read. Many are afraid to publicize their writing for fear of ridicule. Most of the time that fear has no foundation in reality. The thing is, you don't necessarily have to be the next Shakespeare, Twain or Poe, but if you still want to improve your writing there are some things you can do. Practice Makes Perfect If you truly want to improve your writing skills you have to practice. I know it's a bit of a cliche, but it is none the less the truth. Set some private time aside every day to practice your writing. I recommend that you set at least 30 minutes aside a day for your writing. You have to make sure that your surroundings realize that this time is sacred to you. Under no circumstances should you allow anything to prevent you from writing every day. It is extremely important that you make sure that you have a proper environment to work in. You need to be comfortable and undisturbed to focus properly on improving your writing skills and then you need to study! Study Literature You need to study to improve your writing. Even if you're not writing fictional masterpieces I recommend that you still read fiction. You see reading helps improve both your vocabulary, but also your understanding of the written language. Even if your writing in your native language I bet you can still improve your understanding of that language. There are quite simply phrases and structures that only appear in the written language. Knowing and understanding such structures will greatly improve your writing in the long run. How much do you need to read? That really is a tough question, but why not curl up on the couch with a book instead of watching TV? That alone should give you plenty of time to read. Structuring Your Writing As you may have notice in the previous paragraph I'm a huge fan of structure. I always structure the entirety of my writing before I actually type a single word. Personally I love to use mind maps. They simply make the writing process so much easier and I believe they also help improve my writing skills. You see I don't have to spend time while I'm writing actually thinking about what I want to write. I can now focus simply on writing and how to put that writing together. That is one of the exercises I have personally implemented to improve my writing skills. Writing Exercises Improve Your Writing Skills Then there are specific writing exercises. The most common is to write for a given amount of time, preferably with a pen so you can't erase anything. This exercise forces you to keep writing what's on your mind it's also commonly used to overcome writer's block. This is an excellent exercise, but definitely not the only one. If you do write for the Internet try finding some common search terms with Googles's free keyword tool and try to write 5-700 words about that topic. It's a very good exercise and if you write for the web it's what I recommend that you do anyway. Throw Yourself At It In the end the only way to improve your writing skills is to write. So start writing and start sharing what you've written. Sure you may receive criticism, some of the criticism might not even be constructive, but that's the way it is. Take the constructive criticism you receive and use it to improve your writing skills. If you take action and start writing I can promise you one thing though! You are about to embark on an amazing ride that will change your life. articles distribution