One important skill that we recommend you master, to become a freelance writer, is writing. In an age in which machines work for us, forming and expressing original thoughts differentiate the successful from the unsuccessful. That’s why you need to be a great communicator and improve your writing skills. It is a must in a world different from the previous millennium.
While we do recommend certain books to improve your writing skills, as well as continuously exercising your grammar, you should be doing a couple of other things to become a better freelance writer.
Reading books and mastering grammar take time. Sometimes, time is a luxury we cannot afford. That’s why in this piece we want to share with you our wisdom on how to improve your writing skills.
By applying our pieces of advice and practicing writing every day, you will improve your English writing skills. Practice makes everything better, and writing is no exception to this rule.
How to Improve Your Writing Skills
Read Like a Writer
Successful writers read a lot. Of course, not every piece of writing will do. But more important for us is that not every way of reading will help you become a better writer.
If you want to know how to improve your writing skills, you should approach reading as a professional would.
Analyze the text. See how lengthy the sentences and paragraphs are. Analyze how often the author uses the passive voice and the active voice. Think about what has made you like a certain paragraph. It’s a must that you understand the syntax of the language.
Different authors have different styles of writing. If you want to write better, you will, whether you like it or not, copy one of your favorite authors. That’s why you need to be mindful about it and start reading your favorite authors for the sake of reading.
Remember: all writers read a lot. It’s part of the craft, of what makes them professionals.
Write Every Day
The second piece of advice that you need to follow is to write every day. This is how you can improve your writing skills: by actually doing the writing. As a runner needs to run, a writer needs to write.
The good news is that you don’t have to do a lot of writing in the beginning. Additionally, you don’t have to write masterpieces the first time you start adopting this habit. Daily writing must get you into the habit of making writing part of your routine.
If you aren’t doing it already, you can start by doing ten-minute sessions of freewriting. In two or three weeks, writing ten minutes daily should become second nature to you. If you enjoy this exercise, you can increase the time span. Start writing 15 minutes per day.
This isn’t the only writing exercise that you can practice. Even writing comments online on blogs or YouTube videos is a way to improve your writing skills daily. You just need to make it mindfully and offer real value to others.
A more advanced exercise would be to write essays, articles, or dialogues. This way, you not only get in the habit of writing but also force your brain to generate coherent content to put on paper.
Edit Ruthlessly
Once you have your pieces, it is time for that part that not many people think about when they think of writing: editing. You need to edit your own work if you want to improve your writing skills. And you can do it more or less efficiently.
By editing, you are forcing your eye to spot potential errors and typos in your writing. Make it an editing goal to rewrite more concisely. If you didn’t know the secret of good writing, then you should know it is conciseness. At first, you may write unnecessarily long sentences. However, by editing your work, your writing will become more concise.
What can you do with your piece when editing?
For starters, you can cut out the filler words. As mentioned, conciseness is the standard of good writing. You can do that by eliminating any word that doesn’t have its place in your piece. Intensifiers and adverbs are the most often used filler words in writing. See if intensifiers serve a purpose and whether the meaning of the adverb isn’t already present in the meaning of the verb. If it is, then cut the filler word. You will improve your writing this way.
Editing is a craft beneficial for anyone who aspires to write. If you want to improve your English writing skills, it is best to start editing your own work.
Learn the Grammar
To read better, write better, and edit better, you need to understand grammar. If grammar wasn’t your favorite subject in school, now, as an adult, you can look at it with completely different eyes.
Understanding grammar can help you think about a text as a writer would. Also, grammar can be the best coach if you want to improve your writing skills.
How can you improve your writing skills in other ways than by understanding the core of a language, i.e., the grammar?
Do not overdo it. Your goal is to become a better writer, and you can improve your writing skills by having a better grasp of grammar. By overdoing it, you put your focus on the grammar for the sake of understanding the grammar. That’s when the idea of learning the grammar of the language for improving your writing skills loses meaning.
A good writer masters the grammar of the language in which he or she writes. Still, the writer isn’t a grammar teacher, so don’t put more focus than needed on it when you are trying to improve your writing skills.
Get Feedback
No matter how hard we try, it is impossible to spot all the weak spots in our writing. This is why it is important for you to find a writing partner. Your writing partner’s mission will be to read your work and offer honest feedback.
Of course, not everyone can become your writing partner. Your mother may have the best intentions in the world, but if she doesn’t understand grammar, she cannot be of much help for you to improve your writing skills.
Your writing partner should be a friend or acquaintance who shares the same passion for writing and the same wish to become a better writer as you. The key is to learn from the reader’s experience, and if the reader has working knowledge of what makes good writing, the better for your goal of improving your writing skills.
If you don’t have such a friend, there is a free, efficient alternative. You can use ChatGPT or Gemini as a writing partner. Copy and paste your work to the AI tool and be clear on what you want from it. For example, you can ask the AI tool to pretend it is a person interested in writing. After that, send it your text to tell you what it “thinks” about it.
Have the Right Mindset
A good writer has the right attitude. For that, you need to develop the right mindset around writing. Suspend your judgment and open your mind. Stop caring about what people may think about your work. You have no obligations towards them.
This should place you in a state of relaxation in which you can focus on your writing. You don’t care what others believe about your writing. You just focus on delivering the best possible work.
After that, you need to adopt a progress mindset. Your writing is always a work in progress. It always becomes better. Day after day, you become a better writer. Daily, you improve your writing skills. You need this mindset to not fall into the perfectionist mindset. How?
Writing is not a science but a craft. There isn’t a set of rules that tells whether a piece is perfect or not. If you fall in the perfectionist trap, you will never feel ready to write. Clients lose faith in you, and you lose opportunities. Improving your English writing skills means finishing your work believing that the next piece will be even better crafted.
How to Improve Your Writing Skills
By always improving and following the writer lifestyle, you can become a better version of yourself. Read every day, write every day, and learn from your mistakes every day. Improving your writing skills takes time, but you know there’s a path to follow in this quest.
We at Thumos Writing believe in the power of words. That’s why we have published various articles on language and grammar on our blog. Read more about the most common grammatical errors in the English language. Also, if you truly want to improve your English writing skills, you can review our recommendations on books to do just that. Another piece that we want to mention here is about five ways to improve your writing skills.
Writing better is a journey of a lifetime. We hope to have inspired you on this quest.
