It has been a significant amount of time since my last blog post. Life, school, the universe, it all got busy. Here I am back though, writing my way through another post, because I have been told that practice makes perfect when it comes to writing.
I recently attended a seminar at school about starting a writing group, and getting your work published. This seminar series runs every Thursday, and I try to make as many as I can. I wasn't convinced that this particular one would be useful to me, as I was not looking to start or join a writing group, or get my work published in a peer reviewed journal. One important lesson I did learn though, and it is one that I feel will apply to my fast approaching foray into the professional world, is that in order to improve your writing you need to do three things...
1. Write more
This kind of goes without saying, but I have a confession to make. When it comes to writing, I am lazy. I am disappointed that words do not flow more easily for me, or that I can't string together an argument as eloquently as some of my colleagues, but I do not put in the time to figure out what works, and what doesn't. So here I am, working on my writing by starting up my blog again.
2. Read more
By this I mean two things. When it comes to getting your work published, read more about what you are writing about and read more of the journal you are trying to get published in. As I stated before though, I am not looking to get published, so I am choosing to look at this advice in an alternative way. Read more of everything. Novels, fiction, non-fiction, advertisements, biographies, textbooks. Get acquainted with how these authors structure their words, and string them together. Figure out what you like and don't like. Open your mind to words and thoughts and arguments, I can only assume that this will help with how you communicate thoughts and arguments of your own!
3. Get more people to read your work
That is kind of what I am doing here. It is not always easy to throw words out into the internet, where anybody can read it and critique. Edits, critiques and suggestions are how writing is improved though!
There is much more going on in my program right now, seemingly endless assignments and papers and research, but I wanted to write about this seminar because I feel like it will help me keep focused and on track in the remaining two months of classwork.
