How Do You Challenge Yourself as a Writer?
7 obvious and less obvious ways to improve your craft
In many ways, writing is a solitary venture. While there are many ways to connect with others, when we sit down and write, it’s usually us and the white page and the creative voice or voices in our heads.
For years, I was a closet poet & writer, and I shared my Narnia with no one. I don’t know if I wasn’t sure anyone would be interested, or if it was the fear that it wasn’t good enough or the fact that I often struggled to give them proper endings, or all of the above.
I started publishing on Medium to shed these fears. And maybe try to build an audience so that when I finally completed a novel, I had people to share it with. Along the way, I realized that having different people read my content and share their thoughts, feedback, and highlights also gave me a different perspective on my writing.
Below I’ve listed some of the obvious and less obvious ways I’ve been trying to improve my writing. I’d love to hear if you use these too and what other ways you have!
7 ways I work on my writing
1- Getting feedback
This is probably the most obvious one. It requires little explanation, description, or defense. Having different people (admittedly, honest, unafraid-to-be-critical people) read your work is a great way of challenging your writing. Sometimes, it’s entirely enlightening, and you discover new things in the text, like interpretations you hadn’t seen or gaps missed.
Other times, it’s frustrating, and you fail to see how the reader fails to see your point. But even when it’s frustrating; (especially when it’s frustrating), I’ve found it has made my writing better. If you heard me following up on my brother’s feedback, you might think: “if you disagree with it so much, why do you keep sending him your stuff?” It’s because he is thorough when he checks the narrative flow and takes the time to analyze every literary device and question every comma — he’s really fond of semicolons.
2- Writing out of the comfort zone
Trying different styles and formats. I don’t think I have tried this since high school, but I’ve been working on it now and love it. I cannot recommend it enough. I’ll find an author or story I like and try to emulate the style. Or take a post I wrote and change it from story to article or poem, or the other way around.
It’s a great way of looking at our writing from a different angle (and a fun way to get back to writing on the days we’re less inspired to do so).
3- Learn from other writers with workshops & courses
While I read a lot of writing books, I think it’s more out of curiosity about other people’s writing processes and struggles than trying to glean a new process for myself. A lot of times, the guidelines and suggestions they have are rooted in that writer’s particular mode of writing, and it can be difficult and frustrating to try and use it for the projects you’ve already started.
For a while, I struggled to see this through. I felt like it was less challenging to improve my writing and more challenging to turn my writing process into something it’s not. Recently, I discovered that for me, at least, it’s better to create new pieces in workshops than to try to use their guidelines for whatever I’m working on at the moment. This allows me to follow the deadlines and delivery formats of the course more easily. If it sparks any ideas for other projects, then great, but it does so in a more natural way.
Some writers need to outline the entire piece before they sit down to write. One of my favorite authors, V.E. Schwab, shared that she will write out what will happen chapter by chapter before sitting down to write. Others work on a timeline to make sure they get the right build-up, or they focus on describing the characters and the relationships between them. I’m one of those weirdos that like to sit down and write like I’m seeing and writing the movie at the same time. After that first flow, I sit down and mold it into the format I want it to have.
4- Other ways of learning from other writers
Read! I like reading different books to see what they inspire; they offer different lenses through which to look at our writing.
When I’m reading, I often copy sentences (and even paragraphs) I like into a document I have of book quotes. Rewriting and rereading them, I try to figure out what it is about them that stuck out to me.
Book clubs can also help with this. Seeing how other people react to different events, what they highlight and question, and how they engage with the writing can also be quite enlightening.
5- Walk away and then come back
This is probably the closest I got to “other people reading it” when I didn’t share my writing. If you give it enough time, you come to the text with new eyes.
If it’s a piece you’re writing for Medium or a story on a deadline or any kind of piece on a deadline, sometimes walking away from it for a couple of hours or days is not enough to really shift your perspective. It may help you find typos or sentences to polish or a dialogue you can tweak a little, but if it’s a short piece, that may just be enough. For novel drafts, I find I need to walk away for a little longer before I get the editing toolkit out.
6- Reading it out loud (before and after Grammarly)
I love Grammarly, but it also feels a bit lazy to let it do all the work. I find that if I read it out loud first, I often find a lot of mistakes by myself, and they’re more likely to stay in my head the next time I write than if I just fix them with the app. Also, as great as it is, it’s not perfect. Sometimes it’ll suggest hacking words we add for emphasis, dramatic effect, or embellishment. And unless you’re paying for Premium, there are a lot of punctuation recommendations you don’t get.
Not convinced yet? I think reading out loud lets us slip out of the writer’s side for a minute. Try it.
7- Metrics?
I’m leaving this one with a question mark. I guess it depends on what you are writing and why. I believe writing more will improve my writing, so I set quantifiable goals for the number of posts I want to publish.
Clicks may be a measure of our title-writing skills. Looking at our posts’ engagements: likes, highlights, and comments may measure our ability to share stories and messages that resonate and spark recognition or questions.
That said, some of the stories I’m most proud of had very limited reach, and I’m not sure why this is intrinsic to the writing. So, do fixed goals and metrics help our writing?
How do you challenge yourself as a writer?
Do you do any of these? Do you find some more useful than others? Are there any other ways you’ve found to work on your writing? Let me know in the comments!
