How to Improve Your Writing (or Music or Drawing or...)

I was on a date, once upon a time, and she asked me "So. What do you do?" I replied, "I'm a software architect, a musician, and a writer."

She blinked at me with what I'd consider disbelief and said, "That the most pretentious bullshit answer I've ever heard."

Clearly, we didn't hit it off.

But it was true! Not the pretentions bullshit part—I made my rent money designing and programming software. I'd compose and produce music for release on CDs and for television promotional advertising and make a few bucks. Once in a while I'd get music in a B-movie soundtrack.

And, I was writing. Constantly, at least when I wasn't at the keyboards (piano and synthesizers, thank you very much).

At the time, I was an excellent software nerd, a pretty good musician, and a crap writer. Well, I say "crap", but I was somewhere south of smack-dab in the middle of mediocre. I just didn't know the rules or the craft that well.

I'm a lifetime reader, so I did my best to follow my "muse" and just write.

Ok, that's the setup. The prelude. The prologue. Now, fast-forward to the near-present.

Small dragon writing its memoirs

I wanted to level-up my music skills: piano technique, composition skills, and production skills (mixing and mastering for publication). If you're a writer, think of it like writing craft, plotting and storytelling, and then editing/formatting for publication.

So, I got a great music teacher. I mean, a GREAT teacher. Professional, real credits longer than my sleeve. Longer than his sleeve. Major names on his resume. The works. And the very first lesson? The very first lesson was:

CONSISTENCY.

Work on it consistently. Every day if possible. Even ten minutes a day! Thirty minutes a day? Even better. CONSISTENCY was key to development, to advancing your skills. To compete with the you of yesterday; to be better that than dude in the mirror who needed to shave a week ago.

10 to 15 minutes every day of focused work is better than 2 or more hours one day a week.

I developed a practice plan of ninety minutes and did it six days a week. At least, for the first year—after that I reduced the work to thirty minutes or so. But I kept up the consistency.

I got better. Quickly! I mean, after a month of this my piano skills were demonstrably improved, and my composition skills were much better.

After two years of consistent practice and work, sometimes ten minutes and sometimes up to an hour, I was much, much better. The old me didn't stand a chance.

So, TL;DR: Now what?

Here's how I apply these lessons to writing. It's all from what I learned studying music. I think these apply to any work in the arts.

CONSISTENCY

Write as often as possible. Every day would be great, but if you can't make that make as many days in a week as possible. The goal here is consistency; not the number of words on the page. Don't worry about that. Just write.

BE YOURSELF

When I say just write, I also mean just write in your own voice, your own style. Don't worry about what other people write, what's selling at the moment, and all of the directives, best practices and other nonsense you might read about. The key when you write is to open the gates to your mind, your being, and just GO. Use your voice.

GET IT ON THE PAGE

And, yes, for some people drafts suck (I love drafting). But that doesn't matter right now. At this point, write the story that you want to read. And write it in whatever voice comes from you. I'm repeating myself here, but this is worth repeating. Just get it onto the page—don't worry about quality. Please believe me, your first drafts will get better with time and consistency.

TRUST YOUR TASTE - WRITE WHAT YOU WANT TO READ

Write what you love. Write what you want to read. If you do this, and you have good taste (let's assume that you do, of course), then other people with similar tastes will gravitate toward you. I'm not discounting marketing here—the point is to write what you love, and other people who love the same or similar things will love your work once they find it.

IGNORE THE CRITICS

Or, better said: only take criticism from people you want to take advice from. That's professional editors, other skilled and seasoned writers, experienced beta readers in your genre, and so on. And even then, you might not agree with their constructive criticism! Most of all, ignore your inner critic. "This sucks!" will be a voice in your head as you read your drafts (there's one in my head). Ignore it. As you revise, you will shape it into something you love.

IF YOU CAN, FIND A COACH

That would be a Developmental Editor, a writing partner with more experience, a creative writing class, and so on. Look around, talk to people, and find the right fit for you. I found that in both music and in writing, an experienced coach who's a great fit for me (and vice-versa) helped me greatly improve my craft, my approach, my practice. Everyone it different, but I do believe that for most of us, this is a great choice.

THERE IS NO TIMETABLE

We have to move at our own pace. All of us. Unless you're on a publishing deadline (congrats if you are!), this isn't a race to the checkered flag. And the only person you're competing with is the you of yesterday. Those folks who go from draft to self-published in three months? Awesome, good for them! That's not me.

Now, a fair warning: this doesn't mean we'll never finish. At some point, we hit a place where a revision makes the story different, but not better. Learn where that is, and when you hit it—you're ready for proofreading and line-edits! I literally ask myself: "Is this better, or just different?".

Also, walk away for a week or two. Put the manuscript away and don't touch it. When you come back to it with fresh eyes and a fresh mind, it'll read differently than when you wrote it.

DO NOT USE AI TO HELP YOU REVISE YOUR DRAFT

AI will homogenize, flatten, bleach, and de-voice your work—your art. The models are trained on hell-knows-what, are aligned to advise on various grammar and "Manual of Style" references, and have absolutely no context for YOU and what you're writing. Even if you "coach" it up to your voice, your way of writing -- it isn't you. And it will still lean toward removing your voice entirely until you sound like an IBM sales manual from 1983.

Also, the joy of writing is to WRITE! To create! Why shuffle-off the fun work to a stochastic algorithm? Hell no.

(I work with AI every day in my "day job". I've tried some of the above on business documents. software programming—never on my fiction—and it can be maddeningly frustrating to use, wildly incorrect, and makes assumptions I never implied nor asked for. So unless you want to constantly argue with a anthropomorphized implementation of linear algebra, forget it.)

AND HERE WE ARE

That's it! These are my thoughts, wrought from what I practice. I hope this helps! Feel free to drop me a line at my email or add a comment here.

My debut book, THE FROST EMERALD AFFAIR, is available to read for free if you're on my newsletter. Everything I mentioned above went into the writing of this novelette.

-J.R.

P.S. If any of this advice helps you, please do let me know! I'd love to hear about your experiences!