Step Your Writing

Writers sometimes stumble because they try to run before they can walk. In other words, they seek success immediately without having to put in the hard work to get there. Often, this focusing on the end product first instead of the process leads to abject failure. No other craft allows perfection without practice. Neither does writing. To become a good writer, you have to start with the basics. Be good at grammar. Be good at sentence construction. Know how to write a tightly woven, unified paragraph. Learn to write in the active voice. Shine at word selection. Do all these basic things well and then move on to the next step of composing that essay or story or novel. But don't graduate yourself into the next level when you haven't mastered the previous one. It's just counterintuitive to do so and you're only setting yourself up for failure and frustration. No one wants to read a writer who hasn't first mastered the language. You may tell a compelling story, but if it's full of grammatical errors and poor construction, readers won't care about your story. They'll only see the mistakes. Poor writing signals poor habits - inattention to detail, laziness in learning the fundamentals, rushing for the praise not yet earned. And readers will remember bad writing just as clearly as they remember good writing. To keep them coming back, do your apprenticeship before you seek to publish. Take your writing in steps and you will step into a successful career.