Authors and Working Writers: Developing Discipline and Good Writing Habits
One of the questions beginning authors and writers ask of experienced authors and writers most frequently is, “How do I improve my writing?” From the outside, we need to make a distinction between an author and a working writer. An author is anyone who, for whatever reason, has written one or more books. Anyone who chooses to write, or get help writing, can become an author. This is one of the wonders of our modern age; the barriers to entry to become an author have never been fewer. All authors can benefit from blogging for multiple reasons, one of which I’ll discuss in just a moment.
A working writer, by contrast, is someone who makes a living (or at least a side income) from their writing efforts. Working writers are just authors who do more writing work across more diverse fields. While an author may have chosen to write a book, or more than one book, a working writer gets paid to write everything from books to marketing copy to website content to magazine and news articles. It’s a question of frequency and degree. What the working writer has in common with the author, even the casual or one-time author, is that both benefit from blogging.
“Sometimes I think of blogging as finger exercises for a violinist; sometimes I think of it as mulching a garden. It is incredibly useful and helpful to my “real” writing”. – Kate Christensen
The simplest answer to give someone in answer to the question, “How do I improve my writing?” is often, simply, ”Write more.” It’s a fact that the more you do something, the more practice you have and the more hours you spend, the better you will get. There are, however, some caveats. It’s not enough merely to churn out writing for the sake of writing. There are amateur authors out there who are very proud of having churned out hundreds of thousands of words in the form of book series… but in the absence of any real feedback, they don’t change much as they go. To improve as a writer, it’s not enough merely to write more. You need to write more with the expectation of feedback.
Blogging provides this platform. Publicly posting invites feedback and comments. This is invaluable, because public commentary can sometimes take you in directions you’d never expect. One of our frequent co-authors shared a story once involving a comment he received about writing too much in “passive voice.”
“I’d never even thought about that before,” he admitted. “That comment sent me down a rabbit hole that eventually resulted in quite a bit of improvement to what I was writing on a regular basis.”
Blogging also provides you with the opportunity to develop good habits in terms of the frequency and consistency of your writing. When you commit to writing and publishing a regular blog, you are taking on a recurring responsibility. Many authors, especially those just starting out, tend to write whenever they feel like it. This can be remarkably inconsistent. There can be huge gaps in which nothing occurs, during which the author’s talents languish.
Regular blogging, on the other hand, not only encourages the writer or author to get in the habit of putting words on virtual paper on a consistent schedule, but also facilitates the very sort of practice that leads to improvement. Even if you never receive a single comment on your blog, even if no feedback at all is forthcoming, you will view your work differently if you know that the public will see it and read it. That knowledge, that public feedback is forthcoming or could be, will crystallize everything you are doing in ways you might not expect.
Regular blogging, therefore, is not just writing practice. It is good-habit development, in the same way that having a workout partner encourages you to go to the gym when you’d otherwise press “snooze” and spend more time in bed. The more you get into the good, constructive habit of writing consistently on a regular schedule, the more this will become ingrained in you as an author.
There are a few other caveats, of course. One of these is that writers can become distracted by blogging and spend too much time “writing about writing” without actually producing new creative work. At this stage, however, we’re working toward becoming regular bloggers. You should have such problems as to be blogging “too much,” at this point on your journey. No, right now the danger is in not blogging, in not developing those good habits, and in not becoming the consistent producer of creative content that you are and can be.
Take this lesson to heart, therefore, and start blogging on a regular schedule. No matter what type of writing you do, you will benefit from the discipline this activity instills. Every successful author can and will acknowledge this.