- When in doubt, read your sentence/paragraph aloud. If it doesn’t flow, if you’re having trouble getting through it in the least, then it doesn’t work. Go back to the drawing board. Simplify.
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- Simple is good. Only write long sentences if you must. Only use words you fully understand. Continuously scan and edit for unnecessary words and sloppy phrasing.
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- If you’re bored by your own writing, your reader will be too.
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- Trust your gut.
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- Don’t get comma-happy. Ask yourself if you really need that comma no matter how much you love it being there. The comma-happy writer is like that guy who stops every few seconds to ponder the significance of his own words. It gets old pretty quickly.
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- Don’t lose sleep over clichés. Somewhere along the line we all got scared to death of using clichés and therefore losing any originality we ever had. Clichés are clichés for a reason; they usually hold some degree of truth. Be wary of them, but don’t let them keep you from writing. No one is 100% cliché-free. The trick is making the unavoidable cliché your own.
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- Free writing doesn’t necessarily mean fast writing. Free writing exercises are great, but they need not be rushed. Try the fast free-write and then try the free-write with no pace attached to it at all. Let ideas come to you, put them down on paper without judgment or revising, and think of it as a kind of meditation.
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- Save ideas for later. When you sit down to write something with a specific purpose in mind, semi-related or completely unrelated ideas inevitably crop up asking for space and attention. Be aware of these little ideas as they come about and ask yourself it they really belong there. If they don’t, make a note of it and move on.
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- Use humor. Funny is good. Funny is fun.
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- Use the semi-colon sparingly. Unless you’re using the semi-colon in a list, both sentences on either side of the semi-colon should be complete sentences. The latter sentence must inform the first.
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- It’s okay to use I. In short, forget about all those teachers who told you to write as if you didn’t exist. For example: it was believed that one should never use the word I despite the fact that the world was made up of human beings with brains and hearts.
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- Be yourself, be yourself, be yourself. If you think about it, you really have no choice. Seriously though–read lots of books, hone your craft, but ultimately, embrace your own voice and writerly instincts. They are there for a reason. Despite what your inner critic tells you, you are actually not an idiot.
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- Take these writing tips with a grain of salt. They may be useful to you, they may not be. You are your own writer. Trust yourself.
