A few days ago Scarlet Knight (now to be known as Carolyn, who is a very nice lady I met in person last week) asked this:

Okay, Clint I have a question for you, and you can answer it any time. You mentioned that you focus in on a writing area you want to improve on and then work on it until it is better. I am curious about the whole process you take with this. As a writer, I want to improve upon my writing and am wondering the best way to do this. Thanks! =)

This doesn’t seem to need an entire essay, so I’ll answer you here on this post, Carolyn (and who says that’s less rocking than Scarlet?).  So, my basic methodology for improving my writing.  Hmm.  I guess it would go something like this…

I just wrote the methodology I used to improve my writing skill and deleted it.  Really, I got to step seven and realized that what I’d written, while perhaps witty, wouldn’t do anyone reading this the least amount of good whatsoever.  So instead of telling you things I’ve tried, I will tell you what I eventually found worked for me and what I suggest others do.

1) Read.  It seems simple, but this is where you have to start.  You read not so much to acquire skill with language (though that’s vital too) but because reading trains your mind into the method of story and communication.  It also lets you into particular discourse communities.  What I mean by this is that different groups have different versions of language; a teenage daughter and her middle-aged father both speak English (or Dinka or whatever), but they don’t speak the same English.  Similarly, readers of traditional romance novels speak a different language (a symbolic system for communicating thought and concept) than readers of epic fantasy.  It is only by reading within a genre, contemporarily and classically, than we as writers can become fluent in the ideas, values, and shared meanings of our readers.  If you don’t read (and engage in other forms of story consumption), you never acquire the storyteller’s taste.  If you don’t read in the genre in which you’ll write, you do not understand your reader, so you can’t create a meaningful experience for her.  (This all stems from reader response literary theory, which isn’t all that complicated but I don’t have time to cover it here.  Just remember this: your reader will take your text and build their own version of the story.  If the pieces you give them are too alien or old hat, they cannot build a treasured final product.  You need to know your reader to give them narrative material they can build with.)

2) Write.  This seems as simple as #1, but it’s just as important.  To develop skill writing, you can’t spend all your time researching or reading books on technique and composition, or reading, or revising past works.  The fact is, every one of us has a lot of bad writing in us before we reach the well of good stuff.  The only way to get through the bad is to spew it out.  Writing lets you find your voice, which essentially means the style that most effectively communicates your perspective to others in a meaningful way.  You have to search to find this, and so any writing that communicates to others is helpful.  Write letters, and journal entries, and essays, and short stories, and poetry, and anything else you might conceivably show another person.  Any time you write something with the intent of being read, you develop your skill.  With that established, here are some sub-points about writing:

• 2a) Write the form you most want to write.  Mostly, this means novels, as far more writers aspire to be novelists than essayists of short story writers.  You’d be surprised, then, how many spend little or no time writing in the form they aspire to make their career in.  If you want to write novels, write novels and finish them.  Perfecting three chapters can’t make you a novel writer.  Writing one crappy novel, beginning to end, is far better.  Likewise, if you want to write short stories, write them.  Or essays, or poetry, or whatever.  Write what you want to publish, and devote as much time as possible to writing in this form.
• 2b) Write in other forms.  If you want to be a novelist, don’t avoid writing short stories.  Try poetry.  Write in a number of different forms, from 100,000 novels to 250 flash pieces to on-the-fly blog posts.  Write in a number of different rhetorical situations and you’ll learn that each demands something a little—or a lot—different.  This will hammer into you the consideration of your audience and awareness of writing for rhetorical effect. 
• 2c) Use short works to experiment.  Novels are huge investments of time, so I encourage people to try new tactics and compositional choices in short works, such as stories or essays.  Another benefit of this is that a short work can be composed according to Poe’s “Unity of Effect,” meaning everything in the entire piece is in unified service to a single overriding principle or theme.  Thus, if you wanted to explore the potential of short, choppy sentences of description delivered in bunches (as I did in my short story “Modern Woman”), that choice becomes the dominant technique of the whole piece.  This makes it really easy to explore the possibilities of any one compositional element.  By writing a number of short works specifically designed to develop techniques, you can focus greatly on each tool in the toolbox (King’s metaphor), improve it, and then adopt it into your ever-evolving skill, style, and voice.
• 2d) However you experiment with your voice and style, make sure you consciously develop the following techniques: writing across the point of view spectrum (especially in first and third person, present and past tense, with third person close as well as more distant, and with a narrator of some sort—not omniscient); writing with little or no exposition; writing exposition in a way that is enjoyable (much harder to do than most think); writing from the perspective of adults and children, and people of different genders, classes, nationalities, etc.; writing the same scene from multiple points of view; writing a plot in a single point of view where the character is aware of things happening “off screen” as it were; writing a story that cannot be told from a single point of view; write in every different genre you’ve read in and has interested you; write fiction and non-fiction; write primarily dialogue; write primarily word-for-word thought; write primarily action; write both what is going to happen stories (dramas) and why/how did this happen stories (mysteries); write alliteratively; write without using alliteration; write using dialect; write in different time periods; finally, write anything you’ve never written before if it seems different, interesting, or intimidating. 
• 2e) Finally, write in imitation when you are starting out.  If you read someone whose writing you adore, copy it.  Really, word for word if you like.  I liked to try to write as much like them as I could, from diction to theme.  For example, most formally educated creative writers have a Hemmingway/Carver story somewhere in their history (including me, though I’m not a model of advanced education).  I also have Austin and Dickens stories, and even one Joyce story.  What draws you to writers is their strengths, and imitating them will change you in these areas.  You’ll never write like they do—though you may end up writing just as well or better.  You’ll find that as time goes on, you’ll find less and less of other people’s writing so fresh and new that you want to imitate it.  This isn’t because the writers out there are losing their touch; it’s because you’re gaining your’s, and you’re not as easy to impress as you once were.  At this point, your own style will be mature enough that it isn’t affected by the gravity of the larger planets in the system of literature. 
• 2f) Most importantly, don’t ever be satisfied with your writing before you’ve agonized over it.  If you write without really caring about producing your best work, it doesn’t sharpen your skill.  This is the difference between most aspiring writers and those who are destined to make it: whether or not they waste time.  If you write five books, always straining for your very best, your fifth book will be vastly better than your first.  I promise.  If you write fifty books in satisfaction, the fiftieth will, for all intents and purposes, be the first book.  Demand that you improve your skills.

3) Learn at the theoretical level.  Whether you take classes at colleges and universities (where you must promise never to let anyone dictate to you what is or is not “good writing”) or read books on writing (this is how I learned), take the experience of others and learn from it.  Try to develop a keen understanding of writing, and language, and story, and the business of publishing.  All of these will one day evolve into active knowledge or the knowledge of practice, but understanding the theory and concept is helpful as well.  Don’t every take anything you hear as law.  The only writing rules (with a few exceptions) that are truly sacrosanct are the ones that work for you.  Thus drink deeply of the methodology you hear from others, but only adopt and internalize what you find works for you through experimentation and your own sense of objective.

4) Critique other writers.  While being critiqued is helpful, especially when you start out, training your critical eye is most important.  When you are in a critique group, learn to be honest and astute in your feedback without being overtly critical.  Learn to recognize the difference between what isn’t working and what isn’t your favored style or voice.  When you find something that isn’t working for you, demand that you figure out why.  Don’t take the position that certain things are just bad or good; think in terms of effect.  What compositional choice in the writing produced an undesirable result?

5) Join writing groups.  Associating with people with the same interests is important for reinforcement, encouragement, and networking.  Often these groups sponsor lectures and workshops that can be very helpful.  The more interconnected your approach to developing your writing skill (meaning the more ways you approach your evolution as a writer), the more likely you are to develop.

6) Don’t attach yourself too greatly to any one piece of writing.  Your objective should be to become a master writer and storyteller (even if we never reach this level, it must always be the ultimate goal), not to write the next great American novel.  Never, ever conceptualize your skill and identity in terms of a single work.  Your foremost goal should always be developing yourself and your skill, which will mean moving on from one project to the next.  Don’t devote ten years to perfecting one manuscript, because it won’t happen.  Write ten good manuscripts in ten years, and I promise you the tenth will be better than the first ever could have been, no matter how much work you put in.

7) Set your goals.  Decide what it is you want from your writing.  Then look at all the other options that this will cost you.  You want to publish and make money?  You’ve given up your right to total control of your creative endeavors.  Want to write a niche subject that fascinates you?  Understand that your chances of living off your writing, no matter its quality, is almost nil.  Whenever we truly make up our minds on something we discard other options.  Ours is a culture that values having many options, and likes to pretend that they all are equal.  You cannot do this if you want to truly develop as a writer.  You need to decide what it is you really want, accept that you’ll have to give up some things to get this, and then pursue it with all your vigor and ability. 

Lastly) Defy discouragement and complacency.  The only way we ever stop developing is to give up, either entirely or abandoning the rigor that refines us from a lesser ability to greater advancement.  The moment writing becomes easy, in any aspect, you can be certain you’ve stopped developing.  Don’t aspire to comfort; seek improvement.  Satisfaction in writing should always be “this is as good as I can do right now, so I’ll move on to a new challenge and new learning experience.”  In short, never lose the need to be and do better.   

I hope there’s something in here that helps, Carolyn—and anyone else reading this.  If you have questions or want clarification, please comment.  I can’t stress this enough: I believe almost every single person has the capacity to publish.  Writing skill is learned through work and dedication; it isn’t a matter of raw talent.  I know Stephen King disagrees with me.  Many others do as well.  But I am confident that through good old hard work, the people who read this can develop professional level writing skills.  That’s a promise.  I take comfort in this is because, in the long run, I control my own destiny.  The reason I’ll be successful is I can outwork my competition.  Any of you that can do the same will have success as well.  It’ll be nice to meet and share old stories from the top of the hill.  See you there.