Writing is a notoriously difficult craft; it can take years to hone and you may still not be able to convey exactly what you want. Some people are born with the skill—an intuitive ability to pen their thoughts down on paper articulately and coherently. Some others have to work at it, toiling away day and night to see their writing keep up with their thoughts. Still others find that their writing ebbs and flows, and they search for inspiration in the hope that it will get their hand moving. But one thing is common for all these types of writers: to improve, one must practice. Constantly.

It is an old adage that ‘practice makes perfect.’ For writing, this may not be necessarily true. ‘Perfect’ is a standard that is very difficult to achieve for an art form such as writing, and one that even acclaimed authors and poets would tremble to claim themselves as. Who even is to say what a ‘perfect’ writing style is? But the adage is true insofar that practice certainly makes the words flow smoother and quicker.

Training to Write

I once read on a Tumblr post that ‘you can train someone to operate on hearts, but you can’t train someone to imagine worlds they have never seen.’ The quote stuck with me because it so effectively surmises what makes writing so difficult, especially of the creative kind.

Even those who write realistic pieces, or those who write because they are forced to, are creating a world they have not lived in. A primary school kid writing about their future self is writing of an experience they have never had or a personality they have never met or a psyche they do not yet possess. If you have ever put your pen down on paper and written a fictional account of anything, no matter how small or amateur a piece it is, you have engaged in one of the most difficult activities of the human imagination.

This is why many authors and poets write their best pieces after periods of seclusion or in quiet environments. It takes an enormous amount of concentration and ‘thinking’ to come up with these worlds and to convey them on paper. You may find that you write better in certain environments. Just like some people sleep better in absolute silence and others need ambient noise to fade away to dreamland, the right environment can get your creative juices flowing. Find the most conducive environment for writing for you—whether it is connecting with nature, using cute stationary, or drinking a lot of coffee—and try to write there as much as possible.

Other than finding the right environment, you can improve your writing skills and hone an intuition for it through reading. By reading you are absorbing knowledge about other authors’ writing styles and tones. With every new book, you are gaining exposure to different ways of writing, from minute details like how to structure sentences and construct dialogue, to how they deal with thematic issues and pace. Reading books of a specific genre will teach you about the conventions of that genre, how authors have negotiated these conventions or altogether broken it, and how you can break them too. Every act of reading is an act of learning.

Practice Makes Perfect

But there is nothing so effective in improving writing ability than writing. Writing frequently and consistently is the only way to truly improve your writing ability. While finding the right environment may help your imagination and focus and reading can help hone your writing sense and vocabulary, you still need to actually write to tangibly improve your writing skills.

By actually writing, you put into practice what you thought you have learnt, and in doing so confirm whether your efforts have been fruitful. You may have encountered numerous action sequences in your reading exploits and find out only while writing one yourself that you don’t actually know how to write one engagingly. By realizing this problem, you start to pay more attention to action sequences in the books you read and dissect how they are written to inform your own writing. The same can be said for introspective pieces or opinion columns or news articles. Whatever the style of writing you are engaging in, only writing will tangibly help you improve.

At this point, some of you may be wondering about how to do so when facing writer’s block.

There isn’t really a trick to writing when facing writer’s block. I’ve found that the best and most reliable way to overcome writer’s block is just writing. Waiting for inspiration may work for some, but who knows how long you’ll have to wait? Instead, try putting your pen down on paper and seeing what comes out. A lot of it you may be absolutely unsatisfied by. But think of those as the wastes in the process; what you shave to produce your final successful piece. Practice can also help you write your way out of a writer’s block.

There are many hacks and tricks you can find out there to improve your writing, but there really is no better alternative to actually writing. Everything else works like supplements.