Writing is not just an inborn talent that you can just used it whenever you are assigned to write. It is not something that only those people who are destined to be writers can only write effectively and successfully.

No. You are thinking of the wrong way. If you wanted to be a writer and if you have any passion in writing, then you can be one. Even if you think you don’t have the abilities to be a writer, you can still be one. How is it possible that anyone has the capacity to write well? Maybe you had asked these questions to yourself.

Well, the truth is, all of has the ability to write and we can all acquire the skills to become one of the successful writers out there even if we only use it for personal, academic or business purposes.

For those who are not confident enough to write, just because you are disappointed with your abilities in writing, don’t get discourage. The only key for a better writing skill is to practice and practice. Write more and do some writing exercises. That’s it.

Want to practice writing? Then sit down and write. That’s really all there is to it.

Of course, many of us will try to do that and end up staring blankly at our computer screens. Some will end up hitting Firefox and heading over to Facebook instead. Me, I end up watching YouTube. For some reason, practice just never works out the way it’s supposed to.

That’s why you need writing exercises for practice the same way you need a proofreading software for your editing stages. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Expanding Non-Descript Words

Words that supposedly say something but really don’t are among my personal pet peeves. Take terms like “nice,” “excellent” and “awesome,” for instance. What the heck do they really mean?

To train yourself in eschewing these non-descript words in favor of more colorful descriptions, try to find a piece of your writing that uses them unsparingly. Find all the phrases you’ve put together that suffer through it, such as “an awesome car,” “gorgeous weather” and “shoes are quite nice.”

Pick them out and rewrite them, this time detailing what the non-descript words refer to. What’s so awesome about the car? Why is the weather gorgeous? How does a pair of shoes qualify as quite nice?

Creating Powerful Images

This next one is a neat trick to coming up with powerful writing imagery. Draw two columns on a piece of paper. On one side, write a list of twenty tangible nouns (e.g. river, house, machine); on the other, write twenty intangible (aka abstract) nouns (e.g. justice, progress, dreams). Randomly take one word from each column and combine them in an “a..of” phrase, ending up with statements such as “a house of justice,” “a machine of progress” and “a river of dreams.” Sure, some of them will sound lame, but you’ll also end up with some powerful imagery.

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Category: Writing
Keywords: writing exercises, writing practice