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20 Of The Best Writing Tips

Posted on December 22, 2007 by Scott Belsky

Melissa Donovan at "Writing Forward" publishes some of the best tips for emerging Writers.

Do it. Write.
Read as much and as often as you can. Remember, every writer is a reader first.
Keep a journal or notebook handy at all times so you can jot down all of your brilliant ideas.
Make sure you have a dictionary and thesaurus available whenever you are composing.
Be observant. The people and activities that surround you will provide you with great inspiration for characters, plots, and themes.
Invest in a few valuable resources starting with The Chicago Manual of Style, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, and The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition.
Grammar: learn the rules and then break them.
Stop procrastinating. Turn off the TV, tune out the rest of the world, sit down, and write.
Read works by highly successful authors to learn what pleases publishers and earns a pretty penny.
Read works by the canonical authors so you can understand what constitutes literary achievement.
Join a writers’ group so you can enjoy support and comradery in your craft.
Create a space in your home especially for writing.
Proofread everything at least three times before submitting your work for publication.
Write every single day.
Start a blog. Use it to talk about your own writing process, to share your ideas and experiences, or to publish your work to a live audience.
Subscribe to the top writing blogs on the Internet. Read them, participate, and enjoy!
Use writing exercises to expand your talents and explore different genres, styles, and techniques.
Let go of your inner editor. When you sit down to write a draft, refrain from proofreading until that draft is complete.
Allow yourself to write poorly, to write a weak, uninteresting story or a boring, grammatically criminal poem. You’ll never succeed if you don’t allow yourself a few failures along the way.
Make it your business to understand language. Do you know a noun from a verb, a predicate from a preposition? Do you understand tense and verb agreement? You should.
You are a writer so own up and say it out loud, “I am a writer.” Whether it’s a hobby or your profession, you have the right to this title.
Write, write, write, and then write some more. Forget everything else and just write.