Guide to general improvement of your writing by Elton Gahr

[OIPWHR-M.T.]

There are hundreds of books that detail the process of writing and as many ways to write. Writing is at its most basic a private and varied thing. This leads to problems when looking for advice on how to improve your writing. What works for one person can hamstring another, but there are a few piece of advice that are nearly universal. These universal ways to improve your writing can be summed up in a few quotes from Ernest Hemingway. "I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen." Ernest Hemingway Improving your writing is in part the improvement of your senses. You must learn to listen better, learn to see better, learn to feel better and learn to understand this. Spend time in the mall listening to people, write down interesting quotes. Look at the birds in the trees. Read books about everything. "My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way." Ernest Hemingway Try to avoid drawing attention to your writing when the ideas are what you truly want to see. In poetry the way you say things is important in other types of writing you generally want how you say it to become invisible. Having someone stop to think about how smart you are and how perfectly you wrote your ideas is gratifying to your ego, but death to your writing. "There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges." Ernest Hemingway Writing is great fun, but sometimes it is also hard work. Inspiration doesn't always come but that doesn't mean you can simply wait. Learn to work no matter your mood or feeling. Writing is sometimes a fun afternoon jog and sometimes it is a marathon. "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." Ernest Hemingway If you want to write anything that is worthwhile or important it has to be worthwhile and important to you. Put who you are on every page. Write about characters who you love. Write about ideas that changed you. Learn to eliminate that internal censor that tells you that this subject is to touchy, learn to ignore your internal critic that tells you that you don't have anything worthwhile to say, even ignore the internal editor who tells you you are saying it wrong. You can deal with them later, but for now you need to put your heart on the page.