How To Thrive As a Good Writer
Everyone who can read has the ability to write, but not all those who write are good writers. According to me, a writer is that who has a magical way of holding his pen, he who knows how to magnetically attract his readers from the beginning of his writings and maintain them through the writing's juicy flow till the end. Who do you think a good writer is? I know that the first person to come to your mind is that awesome poet, or maybe that best writer you've heard on Ted Talks or your favourite writer of your local magazine. Surprisingly, that geek you know did not wake up an expert. He/she once started at the basic low levels, then follow a line of events that made he/her an expert.
Writing has been my hobby since my primary education period all the way to now, a period of about 10 years. I have been writing short stories, articles, journals, quotes, and lastly, poems are my favourite. In my journey as a writer, I came to learn a few basic steps that you should follow to be a good writer, I'll share them shortly. To pardon you, expert writers were not born magically as experts, they went through a series of steps or rather a chain of proceedings that moulded them into the expertise that they are.
What should you do to perfect your writings?
1. Read extensively
A writer transforms the contents of his brain into paper. For you to be a good writer, you have to read wide and equip yourself with all the flesh of the subject of your theme so that you can produce muscled and strong content from your chain of thoughts. People of technology compare the brain to a storage disk (i.e flash disk, memory card) whereby you can only access the contents you stored in it, (GIGO - Garbage In Garbage Out)
2. Write more
When I was in school, my Mathematics teacher used to instruct me to do at least two sums daily for me to be good at math. Similarly, when I was taking Programming classes in College, my tutor also told me to schedule at least an hour daily to practice writing several lines of code for me to gain the tactics of writing a perfect algorithm. From this, I came to realize that indeed practice makes perfect and you can not make the same mistake twice once rectified. The more you write, the more you correct, the more you master the different ways of holding your pen.
3. Be open to critics
Present your writings to at least two people who can criticise your work. It is also good to get their opinions and advice, then make the necessary corrections that they advised you to. When I was practising poetry, I used to depend on my teachers of English to a critic on my poems. Sometimes their comments were so disappointing and they could make me re-write the poem for the Nth time before actually approving it as a good poem. It was all sweet and sour until one of my teachers help me publish my first poetry anthology book, a series of other books followed…
4. Audience
The more audience you have for your writing, the more likely you are to advance. When you expose your work to an audience, you are much likely to get feedback, take a few compliments and comments from them which you will use to grow as a writer.
5. Accept feedback
Feedback is a pillar to measure the impact of your service- be it a business, writing, a seminar e.t.c
As a writer, you have to be open to feedback from your audience. Accept their opinions, and if possible follow their demand. Sometimes feedback can be very motivating and encouraging, use this as a stepping stone and boost your writing morale high. Rarely do readers give negative feedback. Well, feedback is subject to personal opinions and so accept them and react to your advantage. Business people say 'the customer is the boss', well, writers say 'the reader is the critic' Always be polite and never be discouraged.
In addition to the above, the type of content you are writing about should match the needs of your audience. It should be useful too.
These are the key things that have helped me to shoot up in my journey as a writer, I hope they will help you too.
To all poets who are reading this article, I welcome you to my poetry skill-sharing platform, Cartoon Ink Writers Network (CIWN)s. You can have a look at my poetry anthology in inkitt.
Feel free to follow me on Facebook, Instagram.
It has been my pleasure to share my experience with you, I hope I have helped you.
Good luck in your journey as a writer.
UPDATE:
- All my upcoming technical articles will be in my Hashnode blog
- This medium account will only contain non-technical posts
