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How to Become a Better Writer: 4 Things You can do Every Day

It does not matter if you write for pleasure, grades, or for work related purposes, the better your writing skills are, the more effective you will be at communicating with others. Many people assume that the answer to the question, 'how to become a better writer?' is to take a class or engage in some other time consuming, and costly activity. In truth, there are many, small yet effective actions that you can take each day to improve your writing skills.

1.      Make Writing a Daily Habit

It is fine to take the occasional day off, but if you want to know how to become a good writer, those days off need to be the exception. The reason for this is that your writing skills and your creative abilities need to be used on a daily basis in order to grow. This means that you have to make a commitment to writing, at least a little bit, every day. Making this happen can be more difficult than it seems. It can be very difficult, on the rare days when you have no deadlines and no new writing obligations to meet, to force yourself to write something. This is even more true if there are temptations keeping you from writing such as social media, pressure from friends to come hang out, or simply some beautiful weather. However, if you do stick to it, you will find that daily writing definitely improves your skills. If you are struggling to find writing ideas, you can always free write or journal about your day.

2.      Play Word Games

Believe it or not, those little word games you play on your phone, solo or with friends, are actually helping you to become a better writer. Take a minute to think about it. These games force you to find words hidden within other words, to rearrange letters into various words, to think of synonyms for words, to guess words based upon clues, and much more. Through playing these games, you can improve your vocabulary, and bring words that you seldom use to the front of your mind. This in turn will make your writing much more interesting and varied.

3.      Enjoy Other Creative Pursuits

Writing is a creative process. Because of this, your writing skills benefit, when your creativity is stimulated in any way. Any day in which you spend time doing something creative, or actively consuming the fruits of another person's creativity, you have done something to achieve your goal of becoming a better writer. Any creative activity that you enjoy is perfectly fine, but you must actively pursue it. For example, spending 20 minutes listening to music is fine as long as your are actively and consciously listening to the music. You won't get the same benefits if the music just happens to be playing in the background.

4.      Read

It seems as if every article addressing the subject, how to get better at writing, seems to include reading as one of the steps people should take to improve their writing skills. This is because this is without a doubt, the single most effective action you can take to become a better writer. It's a simple yet powerful directive, to become a better writer, read.