7 Ways to Tell if You are a Better Writer
We practice and put in the hours. We correct our mistakes and learn from them. We believe that our efforts will be rewarded with improvement, right?
In a perfect world, we would know if we were becoming better writers. However, this is our world and we aren’t always the best judge of our own work. Either I am too close to a piece or the critic is shouting over anything else I might think. I’ll hazard a guess that I’m not alone.
So how do we know if we are a better writer than last month or last year? I think, for some of us, there’s less resistance to writing, more willingness to sit down and get going. For others, it might be fewer line edits or scene restructures.
Judy Reeves (The Writer’s Book of Days) offers a specific checklist to measure writing progress. While I can argue the first three, I think the last four are dead on.
- You easily fall into writing about the topic and begin writing without hesitation; you don’t stop to think or consider, you just keep the pen moving.
- You stay with the topic long enough to explore it, rather than verging off into digressions that go nowhere or jumping from one thought to the next. You are a more patient writer.
- You stay out of journal-writing and in creative writing mode; you keep yourself out of the way.
- Your verbs are lively and diverse.
- Your images are fresh
- You write with fewer cliched words and images
- Your sentences vary in length and structure.
I believe Ms Reeves means that we will do these things more naturally in the first draft as we improve our writing skills.
How do you measure your improvement? What advice would you give to others?
I have too reply to this, because it is something which has been bothering me for the last three or four months, and it is a question most writers get around to asking. In my case, though I am probably ouside the majority, I gauge my progress as a writer by the quality threshold. Are there more good paragraphs than bad ones? Maybe.
There are different ways to gauge quality, and verbosity isn’t really the most efficient way of separating the good from the bad. I would lie to think I have more clarity and insight than when I began writing, though it is – very much these days – a highly subjective answer.
Is ‘new ideas’ the same as less cliches? Maybe, but – again – this is a bit too simple for me. I like twisting the classic version of things, such as using unexpected leaps in logic or completely WTF moments to shock people out of complacency. It helps that I haven’t got a very serious sense of ‘writing’ (I take writing seriously, but the characters can crap themselves when faced with danger – that kind of userious).
Sorry about reviving an old thread, but this is interesting… And I still don’t have clear answers that could be applied across a wide variety of writing.
That’s why it’s so interesting…because I don’t think there are clear answers I can apply to my own work. Others might judge my work with more objectivity.
I’m so glad you stopped by to comment. Great viewpoints!