Pebblepup's Writing Den

No matter what activity you choose to do, if you want to do it well, you’ll need to practice. Musicians rehearse. Actors rehearse. Athletes practice. Writers practice too. The best way to do that is to write every day. Keep a diary or a journal. Write down your thoughts. It’s the simplest way to do it. You don’t even have to revise it at first. Right, for about 15 minutes every day. If you choose to. Don’t limit yourself to the length of time. I take up to two hours to write my daily writing, which is 3 pages a day. That’s my goal. Some days I hit it, some days I don’t. Most days I hit it.

I write in a document I call my journal. I write down my thoughts. I write the rough drafts of these blogs in my journal. Then I copy and paste it into its own document and revise it and post it. That’s how it works. That’s my process. If you want to, you can keep your journal separate from the pieces that you put out to the world. That’s fine. The point is you keep working at it and as you revise what you write, you get better at writing. But. I do not revise my journal much. I’ll go through it and correct any spelling errors I have made. Although with dictation I don’t get too many spelling errors. Quite often the dictation software doesn’t hear the words as I dictate them. I go back and fix them. But I wait until I finish writing.

That’s what I recommend. Write for 15 to 20 minutes or even an hour if that’s what you want. Then go back over it, clean it up as I call it, which is revising. That’s the point where you catch all the typos and things like that. I call it cleaning it up because it is making the text presentable. It also makes it a little bit easier to read. Should anybody choose to read it, or you allow them to read it.

My journal entries are a form of free writing. I set a limit which is a goal. And then I spill the words out onto the page. I generate ideas for blogs when I do that too. Not to mention the fact that I also generate ideas for other pieces that I want to write. The point here is not to be perfect. You don’t have to be perfect. All you need to do is write every day. It’s practice. Like any athlete in sports, they do the same things over and over as they work on areas where they’re weak. The phrase, “practice makes perfect,” is a cliche because it’s used so much. It’s used so much because it’s true. The more you practice, the better you get. So, practice your writing. And do it every day. Keep a journal. Keep a diary. Whether you call it a journal or a diary, it’s the same thing. You’re practicing your craft. Good luck and keep writing — every day.