Well, yeah. Here are five simple facts about how reading makes your writing better:

1. Reading increases your vocabulary. That should speak for itself. But if it doesn’t, let me explain. If you increase your vocabulary you can begin to sound like all of those other authors that seem to write with a thesaurus in hand. But that just sounds pompous and arrogant, right? Yes. It can. But when done right, what it does is adds a little flavor to your work. You might also want to pay particular attention to the metaphors used in their writing. Those things can work wonders.
2. Reading allows you to see how the published guys do it. They’re doing something right. What better way to learn from them than reading what they write? I mentioned the metaphors. But what about all the other little tricks you might learn while reading? There’s the rule of “three.” There’s the correct placement of alliteration and what it can do for your words. There are tons of things to learn from other authors.
3. Reading sparks ideas. Heck, I was sitting here reading “The Law of Nines” by Terry Goodkind and it sparked the idea to write this post. I was wanting a topic and while I was reading, I noticed a really good metaphor in the book. That made me think of how reading has improved my writing and made me decide to share with you guys.
4. Reading improves your grammar. You read it when it is right and it sticks. Repetition of anything, also known as practice, helps you get better at just about anything. The problem is how do you repeat something like grammar and know you’re getting it right? You read. You read published books that have already been checked by editors. Sure, they sometimes miss stuff, but it’s a decent education that is much more fun than some of the grammar books out there. Of course, those serve their purposes also, but reading a good fiction novel trumps them in many ways.
5. Finally, reading reminds you of what made you want to write to begin with. The love of writing cannot exist unless you’ve read something and enjoyed it. When you first heard “The Cat in the Hat,” you either loved it or hated it, but you couldn’t hate the melody of those words. When you read that first novel that had you gripped form the beginning to the end, you have to remember how exhilarating it was being in the minds of those characters. Reading shows us what made us fall in love with writing. And it makes us want to write even more.

There you go. 5 great reasons to read if you want to get better at writing. Can you think of anymore? Let me know in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Writing Tips: Commit.
2. Writing Tips: The Conversational Style
3. Writing Tips: Topics, Topics, Topics.

• Give yourself a schedule for your writing projects. Write a blog post every day or week. Write an essay every week. Write a short story every month.
• Be held accountable. Tell your audience when you will write. Tell your significant other when you will write.
• And here’s one I’m doing this year: NaNoWriMo
• NEW: Write a blog post every week. Project 52.

With National Novel Writing Month, you basically sign up to say, “I’m going to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.” And here’s the great part: It doesn’t matter if it’s good or not. It’s just about the writing. Of course, you can always edit it afterwards and maybe turn it into a best seller, but November is about getting words on paper.

Sorry I’m a little late mentioning this one, as it started yesterday, but you can still sign up. You’ll just have to write a few more words each day.

As to the original concept behind this post, commit, it’s a very simple tip. If you want to get better at writing, you have to write more. If you want your writing to get noticed, you have to write more. If you want more ideas, you have to write more. Commit to writing and writing will commit to you.

Related posts:

1. Writing Tips: Read.
2. Writing Tips: The Conversational Style
3. Writing Tips: Topics, Topics, Topics.

I know. I’m spamming my own post with the word “topics.” No, I’m not trying to get rated highly in the Google search engines for the word “topics.” I’m just trying to make a point about “topics.”

I’m one of those people who can write just about anything as long as I have a topic. I can research topics if I don’t know anything about them. If I do know about them, I’ll write about them without as much research. Either way, they normally get written quickly. It’s just the way I am. But here’s my problem:

“Topics.”

I know. I used that word again. But to write about something, you must have a topic in mind. I can sit there and think for hours and never come up with a topic. So the rest of this post is dedicated to the top 5 ways I know of finding good topics.

1. Read. Read the news. Read other blogs. Let those topics start creating themselves in your brain as you look around. Don’t steal ideas of course. But feel free to use what you read as a jumping off point to start your own discussion. Here’s a few different things you can read for ideas:
   • Novels
   • Newspapers
   • News Websites
   • Blogs

   You get the idea.

2. Watch. Again. Feel free to watch movies and television shows and write what you think about them. Let them kick start your mind. Movie reviews are a great way to share your opinions. Maybe the nightly news sparked an idea for a topic.
3. Speak. Have a conversation with your friends. During that conversation, topics are bound to come up. Kind of hard to have a conversation without topics. Use those topics in your writing. Feel free to quote your friends.
4. Listen. Television and books aren’t the only media out there. Listen to your favorite radio shows. Even listening to music, especially lyrics, can help you come up with a topic.
5. Ask. This one is not as obvious, but it gives great results. For example, I asked at some forums for some topic ideas and got plenty. I’ve already written quite a few posts using those sources. Asking has got to be one of the best methods of coming up with topics I’ve ever used. Why? Because a lot of people already read your words. They have preferences of what they want to read from you. So let them tell you those preferences.

Ok. So you now have topics. Or do you? See, the important thing to do is get those ideas for topics on “paper.” Grab pen and paper, PDA, or handheld digital/tape recorder and start keeping track of all of those ideas. Then use them. No use in having topics to write about if you’re not going to write about them, right?

Hope this helps you guys who seem to get stuck with “writer’s block.” Don’t forget: Topics.

Do you have any other methods of finding topics that you use? Feel free to share in the comments. Would love to hear them. Even specific shows, newspapers, etc. would be great to list.

Related posts:

1. Writing Tips: Read.
2. Writing Tips: The Conversational Style
3. Writing Tips: Commit.

Recently, WordPress 2.8 came out. Almost immediately, there were over 100 posts, if not more, announcing the release. When a popular blogger ad service changed their pricing system, the same thing happened. Those little nuggets of news were the sugar cubes and the bloggers rushed all over it. It’s great that you want people to know these things. It really is. But, and I’ll try and ask this as nicely as possible, don’t you think the people who read your blog that actually care about that information… don’t you think… they already know?! Heck, I got that neat little yellow stripe in my WordPress dashboard telling me to update. My price changed dramatically and the blog and forums told me all about it.

You want to know which blogs I read every day? The ones with original content. The ones that make me laugh. The ones that make me have some form of emotions. The ones that tell me something I didn’t already know. If CNN already said it on their front page, it’s likely you don’t need to say it on yours.

Don’t get me wrong. When a celebrity dies and you want to pay tribute to them, that’s perfectly ok. If you want to do an opinion post on the latest headlines, I’ll be happy to read it. But if I see one more post that basically repeats what the news has been saying all day, I think I’ll… well… nothing too drastic… I’ll just stop reading that blog.

Now, see, snowflakes are awesome. Each and every one is different from all of the others in some way. That’s what you should be. In some small or big way, your posts need to be different than all the others. For example, if your blog is about WordPress and 2.8 has just launched, don’t tell me that it just launched, instead, tell me about the obscure new feature and the original way in which you managed to use it. Or another example, if the news announces that the world is about to be forced to go vegan, don’t tell me about the obvious stuff like food, tell me about the vegan shoes. That would be original, especially if you posted pictures of yourself standing on top of the bookshelf at the local library with a pair of them on.

Don’t be an ant. Be a snowflake… wearing vegan shoes and eating spaghetti with a spoon. Oh, and blogging about something original, which was the point of this post to begin with.

Related posts:

1. Writing Tips: The Conversational Style
2. Writing Tips: Commit.
3. Writing Tips: Read.

When I write, I just let the words flow and put down the ideas as fast as I possibly can. I don’t take many pauses and I don’t do much editing like people would say needs to be done. I fix spelling mistakes and such as I find them because I tend to type in a dyslexic manner, but otherwise I let the language stay natural. I also tend to put my thoughts in wherever they may show up. One example would be the quick dialogue I put in the middle of my explanation in the previous paragraph. Another would be (and this happens often with me sometimes) when I put things in parentheses right in the middle of my sentences. That last sentence was an example of this. Those are the “asides” that my brain may branch off to while I’m typing. I don’t think about it, I just put them there. I think it feels more “natural” to do so.

Sometimes I also put words in a visual manner to make the pauses and necessary inflections. For example, I could type, “That was incredible!” or, I could type “That was in-cred-i-ble!” There is emphasis on the different syllables in the word and the reader tends to read it that way with the dashes. I like to make the words look the way they sound in my head. My creative writing professors have always loved that style. Grammar professors, not so much.

So, as an exercise, as you comment on this post, type exactly what you’re thinking. It makes it feel more like a conversation instead of a “formal typing experience” which sounds much less fun.

Related posts:

1. Writing Tips: Commit.
2. Writing Tips: Read.
3. Writing Tips: Topics, Topics, Topics.