Tommy Bailey

I was talking with some friends last night about the discipline of writing. I've observed that I've talked to scores of people in my career who've asked how to write, tips to improve, and how to get published. Admittedly, some individuals have more natural fluidity with words than others. And it is difficult to turn someone with poor writing skills into a great writer. But a writer with moderate skills can become great when disciplined by technique and time. And guess what? Every writer has areas to improve upon. Growing in one's writing skills often means becoming more self-aware of one's bad habits (for me, that is wordiness, identical structuring, and passive verbs). Concise wording, active tense, and strong propositional prose are gifts that few naturally possess. The solution is simple: Write. It's not glamorous. It's labor-intensive, sometimes grueling, and often times simply incredible because writing is an act of iteration and self-discovery. I often don't fully know what I think about something until I write it down. So writing is a reflective process that, at times, produces a product I could not have conceived beforehand. Writing is, in effect, a muscle that one develops through repetition. In my experience, most people like the idea of considering themselves writers more than they are willing to commit to writing. If that describes you, my suggestion is simple: Sit at a computer and hammer out 200-300 words a day. Observe the writers whose style you enjoy and what it is about their writing style that you find admirable. Words will come easier in time. Style will improve. Moreover, if you have a writing project, taking small bites of a writing project is far more psychologically manageable than thinking of a project as a whole. And lastly, the best advice I ever received was perhaps the simplest: Read everything you write out loud. The ear will catch what the eye will miss. If it sounds bad, it's probably because the writing is bad!