“Write quickly and you will never write well; write well and soon you will write quickly.”
When you wake up first thing in the morning, instead of letting yourself fall into the trap of checking email and social media, take the time to be productive and build a skill set that will actually help your career on all fronts: writing.
In case it wasn’t clear already, I love writing. It’s been a part of my life since I was a kid. While I know not everyone else loves it as I do, writing skills are necessary for today’s workplace, whether for quick text messages or long briefs.
As a writer, you must always check your spelling, grammar and punctuation. Those are the major things your reader will notice and judge.
Types of Writing
Expository Writing
The word expository contains the word expose, so the reason expository is an apt descriptor for this type of writing is that it exposes, or sets forth, facts. It is probably the most common writing genre you will come across throughout your day.
In an expository piece, a topic will be introduced and laid out in a logical order without reference to the author’s personal opinions.
Descriptive Writing
Descriptive writing helps the reader visualize, in detail, a character, event, place, or all of these things at once. The author might describe the scene in terms of all five senses. Descriptive writing allows the writer a great deal more artistic freedom than expository writing does.
Narrative Writing
Narrative writing tells a story, whether that story is real or imaginary. Pieces in a narrative style will have characters, and through the narrative, the reader learns what happens to them.
Narrative writing can also include dialogue, and you can find it in all kinds of fictional books.
Persuasive Writing
Persuasive writing influences the reader to assume the author’s point of view. The author will express personal opinions in the piece and arm him or herself with evidence so that the reader will agree with him or her.
4 Ways To Become A Better Writer
Now we will quickly discuss a few tips that help you become a better writer. We will also discuss how these tips improve your writing style.
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Build Your Writing Muscle
The more you write, the easier it will become. Writing is not only a process of improving your skills as a professional writer but also your skills as a creative person. When you look back a year later, you will be blown away by how much you have improved.
Try and experiment with your writing for 30 days. Commit to practicing your writing every single day. It is a muscle and skill that you can build over time. Set aside 30 minutes each day and write something related to your line of work, be it an opinion you have or a draft of something you know you’ll need to say or write.
This could mean you focus on sending a very important email to a top-tier manager or write a professional blog post that you add to your LinkedIn Profile. This not only helps your writing skills but will grow your personal brand as a professional.
Benefits of this tip?
People with strong writing skills are perceived as more reliable and trustworthy. Honing this skillset with not only help you in your current role but will help you move up the corporate ladder. A study by Grammarly noted that those with fewer grammatical errors in their writing correlated to more promotions and higher salaries.
This doesn’t mean emails and reports without grammar errors are a quick shot to CEO, but it does create more credibility. When you come across as composed and well-written (or spoken), you will receive more opportunities.
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Read and Research More
Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read.
Reading is to writing was yin is to yang. If you don’t get it, forget about it.
Even bestselling authors say it: in order to be a better writer, you must read. The more you read, the more exposed you get to broader vocabularies, ideas, and perspectives.
Plus, the more you read, the more likely you are to be successful. Let’s look at Warren Buffet, for example, who reads 500 pages every day. I even heard Bill Gates reads 50 books a year. Stop with the Netflix spree and start reading more.
Also, when given a topic, make sure you do extensive research regarding that topic. When it comes to writing, less is not more. More is more.
Benefits of this tip?
Well, I’m sure you can think of one or two things.
SEE: How To Handle Burnout As A Creative Person
Keep a Journal
This might sound similar to my first tip, but it is not. Journaling has a whole different style of writing. Set time aside each day or week to turn inward and allow yourself to write free-flowing.
Don’t worry about grammar or sentence structure; allow yourself to pen to paper and write out how you feel about a person or a situation, or turn inward and reflect upon yourself.
Write from wherever your curiosity is taking you. This has been huge for me as a career coach, in helping others find their purpose at work. Far too often, we have thoughts living inside of us that we’re not aware of until they hit the page.
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Benefits of this tip?
The more you journal, the better you will know yourself, and connect to your emotions more quickly. This will help you understand what feeling or thought you want to convey the next time you turn online for a conversation with a coworker.
READ: How To Build Professional Development
Use Your Voice
It’s crucial to be in tune with your target audience. You’ll need to focus on what issues are key to them and which topics they will want to read about.
It is also important to communicate using the words and voice familiar to that audience via the websites and apps they like to use.
Make sure all your articles are written in the voice appropriate for the intended audience.
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A Last Word From Battabox
Writing is a skill set and a tool that is not going anywhere. In fact, it is only becoming more important in the workplace.
So, now that you have learned the 4 ways to become a better writer, buy that book, purchase that journal and start building your writing abilities today.
