One Way to Be a Better Writer: Read?

I've heard a number of people say that to grow in writing, you must read a lot. One person said to read all sorts of different things, easy and difficult books. Another said to read challenging philosophy books.

I'd say a better piece of advice is to do things that include not only that but watching TV, browsing the internet, visiting new places, talking to people, and just do what you'd normally do. The reason this will help is experiencing life--the very topic most all writing is about--is what you'll be writing about. If you write something more abstract and philosophical, it still can benefit when you write in a way that relates to life, with examples, analogies, and metaphors. And when you can use language you hear everyday.

The best writing is sometimes the simplest: write what's on your mind. Stop waiting and saying "Oh, wait, I have to do one more thing to get better." Sometimes that can be procrastination or fear of not being good at something.

Reading books on writing is helpful, but you also need to practice and write. When you actually write, you start to see what you like and don't like in how things are worded or titled. You start to develop a "voice." You remember what you added or changed last time and start to feel more confident. You see what works.

If you're blogging, I've heard many people recommend writing something that helps others. Write more than what you did today or an opinion you have that might not help someone else.

Natural Length Writing/Posts

Consistency is one thing editors and proofreaders aim to achieve in certain ways. A style should be used in a certain way throughout a piece of writing. For instance, was "#" or "No." used to represent "number," and if so, if it's repeated, is it the same format?

Some people like consistency in photo size and word length. In a print world that makes sense, because it's hard to change sizes--the production cost might change if you add or remove pages. But for the web, it doesn't matter so much, except for what people expect or accept.

That's why I'm not sure there should be a required length for online writing. Each publication or blog, sure, can have a style where each piece tends to be a certain length. But even then, I don't think it would bother me if the length was different for each post or article.

All that should matter is if there's enough in the content of the piece of writing that the reader will enjoy or benefit from it.

I don't often follow blogs, but the one that caught my attention for a while is probably one of the shortest: Smart, Pretty, & Awkward.

Who Knows

Idioms can be wonderful or annoying often depending on if you understand them or not. Some frustrating moments of learning a new language are wondering why words aren't meaning what they usually do—and it turns out to be an idiom that might be hard to look up in a dictionary.

Today I used the phrase "who knows." And, as usual, I wondered if that was just a family or local thing and if people use it. But it turns out it is what I thought it was. Wiktionary has a definition for it.

 It’s awesome when one or two words can mean a large amount of words.

Good Advice: Foot in the Door

At the end of an internship some years back, when we were about to say goodbye, someone asked a person who was higher up in the company to say a good piece of advice for us.

"Get your foot in the door," he said. "Get a job where you want to work, no matter if it's the lowest job. It will help you get where you want to be."

Years later, I've seen this to be true. I was interning in an IT job at the time and I see it to be good advice most of the time for any industry. Of course, you need wisdom while following that advice. Some companies love to promote people from the inside, and other companies might not have a lot of advancement opportunities.

I've seen a friend start in the mail room and end up with a nice job in the same company. I've seen an intern in editorial be around when a full-time job in editorial opened up and she got it. Any experience you get, it really can help.

Even if you don't know what you want to do, just be humble and take a job that might not be your first pick if you find it hard to get "higher" jobs. Some people can recognize a good worker and want to keep that worker, and they know they might need to offer a higher-paying/position job to do that.

Awesome Word Spotting: Hurly-Burly

I've been reading a book by a British author—I'm not sure if that's why I saw this word in print recently! The word is "hurly-burly" and it was used to describe the world.

One Missed Letter - When "Friends" Becomes "Fiends"

One missed letter can change a word entirely.

Like when "r" is missing from the word "friends."

I was reading a recap article of a popular show and read the sentence, "Why has he been a guy who doesn't have a lot of fiends?" Those two words are the complete opposite! ... But we all know what the author meant (this time!).

"Devaluing Words"

In college, an English professor very passionately said she hates when people used the word "impact" to mean anything less than a physical collision, like a car crash. She didn't like it when people used it to mean "influence" or "effect." For instance, a person who says "Wow, that really impacted me" means that a thing said or done influenced, in a good way, the thinking of a person on a certain topic or helped them feel better about things.

My professor would probably describe this "misuse" of the word as devaluing the word and ultimately the English language.

I would disagree. In one way, I agree that it might cause less clarity—but often in language you take meaning from context. So if you do that, it's pretty clear what a person is saying.

The reason I disagree is "impact" used in that way (as "influence") is used in a metaphorical sense. The impact wasn't physical; it was mental or emotional. A person did or said something that really effected someone intellectually or emotionally. A bulldozer of a thought can really challenge a person's worldview; it can knock down part of the worldview's structure—taking down a piece out of it, this slightly unrealistic view of reality in someone's mind.

Christopher Johnson writes in Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little that much of everyday use of language has metaphors in it. When we talk about ideas, this often happens. "The thought hit me that ... " "Hit me" is a metaphor because a thought can't hit, but these words describe how it felt.

Also, Johnson says that metaphors like this are a good part of language. It brings mental color and pictures to thought in everyday conversations and writing.

I found this helpful in thinking through how to write well. Good writing includes those metaphors. Those everyday idioms. And yeah, of course—adding mental color and pictures sounds like art—so let's do it. Or do it more.

It's freeing—now I don't feel like my writing has to be so formal that I have to take it all out. Let language and metaphor live.