Tips For Freelancers: How To Boost Your Writing Skills Instantly

Even well-seasoned writers are always looking for ways to improve their skills. For someone who makes a living from writing, being the best you can be and constantly improving is very important.

Here are 10 strategies to immediately increase your writing proficiency:

1. Practice the basics. Make sure you have a good understanding of the basic conventions of grammar and writing. Read some good books on creative writing. Keep a dictionary close by to ensure you are employing the proper usage of words.
2. Write as if it’s your full-time job. In other words, give it the focus it deserves. If you want to become very accomplished at something, you must invest the necessary time and effort to do so. Take it seriously and do your best work all the time.
3. Do a great deal of reading in the genre you wish to write, as well as a variety of other genres. Reading exposes you to other writers’ styles and helps to increase your own skills. Pay attention to details in how the other writers structure their sentences, which words they choose and how their written work flows.
4. Study and dissect writing you love. If you aspire to be an essay writer, find great essays and study the details – try to emulate those pieces of written work. What makes the essay appealing? What makes it high quality? What grabbed your attention?
5. The best habit you can adopt is writing outlines. An outline gives you some groundwork to start your writing. It’s better than staring at a blank page. It uses your research work to its fullest potential. Outlines help you organize your material into order.
6. Be ruthless in your editing. Practice doing your own but always use another person’s set of eyes to double-check your work. Even the greatest of authors use the greatest of editors. A good editing job will polish your written work.
7. Don’t get overwhelmed by your first draft. Remember they are almost always a mess. This is how writing works. Just move on and start the second draft, which will be a lot cleaner.
8. Eliminate unnecessary or repetitive words. There’s no place for redundancy in good writing.
9. Don’t be afraid to say what’s on your mind. Your writing shouldn’t be bland and lacking color and imagination. Don’t try to fit in with the crowd and say things the same way everyone else is saying them.