Chapter Eleven

The Writing Process

Write in Stages

Despite what we might have gotten away with on a late night in high school or college, most writing takes place over time, not in a single moment or in a flash of inspiration. It is a process of problem solving, with a series of decisions that should generally be made in a certain order. If you take it one step at a time, you’re more likely to make the best choices.

Approach writing as a four-stage process.

The four major stages of writing are prewriting, drafting, revising, and proofreading. In practice, these stages often overlap, but each stage calls for a particular kind of attention and a particular set of skills.

1. Prewriting: Prepare to write.

You begin writing by thinking—by considering your purpose, audience, and subject, and by contemplating how you can best accomplish your goals. In the prewriting stage, you gather information, conduct research, take notes, outline your thoughts, and perhaps do some warm-up writing exercises to loosen up and get in the mood to write. It is also at this stage—not later—that you overcome writer’s block. One of your main goals in prewriting is to make yourself want to write and to get excited about your purpose and subject.

2. Drafting: Get it down.

Drafting is the stage when you begin to produce copy. The most important point to keep in mind when drafting is to keep moving. Rather than stopping to edit and revise as you go, focus on purpose, audience, and subject. Don’t compose or sound out everything in your mind. Write it down. Try out a word, phrase, sentence, or idea on paper or on screen. Later, in the revising phase, when you have a fresh look at it and see it in a broader context, you will know if it works.

For most writers, drafting is the most difficult stage. Don’t make it more difficult than it needs to be by trying to draft and revise simultaneously. When drafting, don’t try to create perfect text. Keep your revising and editing to a minimum. The secret is to write your first draft as quickly and freely as you can, knowing you will come back later and revise.

3. Revising: Fix it up.

Revising is the stage when you make it good. The word re-vise comes from the Latin word viser, which means “to see” and serves as the root for a number of English words, including vision, envision, and visor. It is at the stage of revising that you have another look, you view your text again, and you do so on two levels: deep and surface. First go back and reconsider broad issues such as your approach, point of view, organization, and persuasive strategy. Concentrate on what you are saying and how you are saying it, and revisit underlying questions relating to purpose, audience, and subject. After that, check your copy for surface issues: word choice, clarity, sentence structure, and the mechanics of language (spelling, grammar, and punctuation).

4. Proofreading: Make it presentable.

Proofreading is the stage when you worry about accuracy. Have you misspelled or mistyped any words? Have you omitted a number in an enumerated list, or have you copied and pasted text when you intended to cut and paste it? If you are writing on the job, review your text to see if you have made it visually attractive by highlighting key points with boldface font, italics, and perhaps bulleted lists. Check for typographical errors.

When proofreading, make four passes through your text. Because it is difficult to check for different types of errors in a single pass through your document, make four distinct passes. Each time through, look for a different type of error, progressing from more general errors, such as missing pages of text, to more particular errors, such as missing commas. Here’s the four-part approach, in the format of a checklist. For easy reference, this proofreading checklist also appears in Appendix IV.

First Check: Does it look right?

• Text is appropriately highlighted (bullets, paragraphing, boldface, underlining, etc.) to engage readers and reinforce main points.
• Common word processing errors (copy/cut miscues, sequence errors, editing scraps, template tip-offs, page-numbering peccadillos, and hidden headers) have been eliminated.

Second Check: Is it effective and complete?

• Central idea or purpose is clearly stated and developed.
• Main points are limited in number and receive appropriate emphasis.
• All subordinate ideas are clearly related to the central idea.
• Material is arranged in a logical and coherent sequence.
• Reader is given the information needed to take the desired action.

Third Check: Does it sound right?

• Word choice is clear, specific, accurate, unassuming, and free of clichés and misused jargon.
• Sentences are free of wordiness, ambiguity, and unnecessarily involved constructions.
• Tone is appropriate to the audience.

Fourth Check: Is it correct?

• Spelling, including technical terms and proper names, is correct.
• Correct words are used to convey the intended meaning.
• Generally accepted rules of grammar and syntax are followed, including parallel construction, subject/verb agreement, pronoun/noun agreement, appropriate verb tense, pronoun case, possessive forms, etc.
• Punctuation, particularly placement of commas and apostrophes, reflects standard usage.

When conceptualizing and drafting, be the artist; when editing and revising, be the critic.

These four stages of writing can be grouped into two broader phases: the creative and the critical. In the first, you produce. In the second, you edit and revise.

First be the artist. Permit yourself to be as creative and spontaneous as possible. Turn off your critical mind and let the words flow. As the poet Michael Dennis Browne advises, think of your first draft as an open audition: Anyone is welcome to come and try out.

Allow yourself the luxury of the first draft. Keep reminding yourself that you don’t have to produce perfect copy on your first try. Know when to say, “That’s good enough for now.” (This advice sounds so easy to follow, but it can be one of the hardest lessons for a writer to learn and practice.) To accept the imperfection of the first draft is a wonderful freedom. It releases you from the censorship of self-criticism.

In the second phase, be the critic. Go back to your draft and revise it with a critical eye and ear. As I advised when discussing organization in chapter eight, after you have captured your thoughts in sentences, think more deliberately in paragraphs. And as I advised when discussing coherence in chapter ten, check your connections. Make sure your thought flows from sentence to sentence and from paragraph to paragraph.

Both phases, the creative and the critical, are necessary and valuable, but think of them as fundamentally distinct activities. Try not to let the critical intrude on the creative. If you attempt to correct as you create, you risk stifling your natural expression. Peter Elbow makes the point convincingly in Writing Without Teachers:

Allow time between drafts.

The problem with trying to edit and revise as you go is that it is difficult to distinguish between the words as you hear them in your head and the words as they actually appear on the screen or the page. If you allow time to pass between the act of writing and the act of revising, you will be a better reader, which in turn will make you a better editor.

The naturalist writer Aldo Leopold had a wonderful method of letting his text go cold. He had a drawer in his desk he called his “freezer.” Whenever he finished drafting something, he would put it in his freezer to let it cool off. Then he would take it out and give it a final reading. Leopold found that letting time pass between drafting and editing helped him be less preoccupied with what he had meant to say and better able to judge what he had actually written.

If you can manage it, give your writing at least a day to “go cold.” If not a day, an hour. During that time, it helps to think about what you have written without looking at it. When you return to your text, you will find that you are more likely to see your words as they will be perceived by your reader.

Overcome Writer’s Block and Get Started

Being too critical too early often results in the dreaded phenomenon called “writer’s block,” “pencil paralysis,” “cerebral constipation”—and other things too colorful to report here. As I mentioned above, a chief cause of writer’s block is the self-imposed expectation that you will write perfect copy in a single draft. If you approach writing as a process that has various distinct stages, however, you will be more likely to overcome the obstacles that prevent you from writing.

Think positively—about yourself and your ability to write.

At the 1976 St. Lawrence Writer’s Conference, I heard the novelist Gail Godwin describe a trick she uses to silence that inner critical voice all writers hear from time to time. Godwin explained that she thinks of this self-censoring tendency in terms of Freud’s notion of the Watcher at the Gate, a little creature that sits perched on the edge of your subconscious mind. Even as your thoughts are first taking shape, this creature says things like, “Stupid. Unoriginal. Doesn’t sound right. Don’t let it out.” When Godwin hears this inner voice, she looks the Watcher at the Gate right in the eye and says, “Be quiet. I know you’re there. You have a legitimate role to play, but you’re too early. First I create. Then I revise.”

Think positively—about yourself and your ability to write. Writing is a mind game, and you can talk yourself out of success even before you begin.

Compose yourself.

Writing requires concentration, and concentration involves focusing on the task at hand. It involves putting out of your mind the myriad thoughts and concerns that may distract you from that task. Unfortunately, the home or workplace environment often is not conducive to mustering the mental concentration you need to write.

As you begin to write, you might find that your thoughts are disjointed and chaotic, as though you are speeding down the freeway in your car, weaving in and out of multiple lanes of traffic, worried that you might not arrive at your destination in time. You might be annoyed about something someone said to you earlier in the day or preoccupied with all the things you need to get done this week.

The next time you sit down to write—and you find your mind awhirl from the competing demands on your time—take a moment to relax. Take a deep breath. Hold it. Count slowly to ten. Exhale.

Imagine pulling off the freeway and sitting quietly by yourself in the woods. Or on a beach. Or in the mountains. Or in your office early in the morning before anyone else has arrived. Or in a musty library reading room with the late afternoon sun slanting through the windows. Anywhere you feel comfortable.

If you feel the urge to daydream, give in to it. Psychologists tell us that daydreaming is a necessary and useful mental process. When your mind says it needs to do some housecleaning, let it clean house. Allow yourself that luxury. In a few moments you’ll feel yourself coming to a point of rest.

This is the frame of mind—one of concentration and focus—required for writing.

Warm up by writing quickly and freely, without stopping.

A good way to put yourself in the mood to write is to read—or if you have already read it, to review and browse—Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. Goldberg offers various stratagems for getting started, and more than any other author I know, she captures and conveys a sense of empowerment: “Write clearly and with great honesty. … Write. Trust yourself. Learn your own needs.”

Like Dorothea Brande, Peter Elbow, and others before her, Goldberg suggests that you begin with a freewriting exercise. The exercise is simple: Simply start writing and don’t stop. You can start anywhere you like, with a thesis statement (“The purpose of this piece is …”) or a description of your mood. Just write whatever comes into your head.

The idea is to relax. Don’t work hard. Just write. Don’t worry about what it sounds like. Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or punctuation. Don’t worry about anything at all. There are only three rules: You can’t stop writing. You can’t go back and read what you’ve written. And you can’t change anything. Try to keep your thoughts flowing until you reach your conclusion, or until you run out of ideas. Only then should you go back and start shaping and editing.

And as Goldberg advises, write honestly. Begin by saying exactly what you are thinking, as clearly as you can say it. Don’t worry about impressing your reader, your boss, your mother, your father, your seventh-grade English teacher—don’t worry about impressing anyone, not even yourself.

Just write.

Don’t stop to choose your words. Don’t pause to revise or to organize your text. Don’t even look at your screen as you type. Just keep hitting the keys, trying to keep up with your thoughts as they tumble out of your head.

When you do this exercise, you might produce text that is disjointed, or you might write something that doesn’t sound too bad, but the quality of the text is not what matters. What matters is whether the warm-up exercise puts you in the mood to write. If it does, you have achieved your goal.

Make a plan.

After you have warmed up, take the next step: Make a plan. You might begin by jotting down your thoughts—do it by hand if writing on paper helps you think. If your assignment is complex, make an outline. At the top of your outline write your purpose in a short, simple declarative sentence. List your main points. Think of specific details, examples, and illustrations that will support your argument. Consider your audience. Ask yourself which points of evidence will be most compelling to your reader. As I discussed in chapter eight, use an outline to help you think.

Allow yourself the freedom of an imperfect first draft.

Hemingway—never one to follow his own advice—was fond of saying, “The only thing that matters about your first draft is that you finish it.” In other words, just do it. Give yourself the benefit of sketching out a draft that is nothing more than a beginning. This approach frees you from the tyranny of perfectionism. It’s a wonderful freedom. After you have created your text, you can always go back and rewrite and polish and fuss over it. Remember: Your first draft is only “sloppy copy.” The idea is to get it written, not right.

Be a bulldozer rather than a bricklayer.

There are essentially two kinds of writers: bricklayers and bulldozers. Bricklayers are writers who are incapable of going on to the second paragraph until they are completely satisfied with the first. They find it impossible to write sentence two until sentence one is absolutely perfect. For them, writing tends to be tedious, exhausting, and time-consuming.

Bulldozers, on the other hand, charge right through the first draft. They just keep plowing ahead until they get to the end. They don’t care what their text sounds like along the way because they know that once they’ve got the words down, they can go back and revise. For them, writing is enjoyable, energizing, and rewarding.

To overcome writer’s block, think of yourself not as a bricklayer but as a bulldozer. Just keep moving forward until you have completed your draft.

Establish a writing routine.

Many writers find that writing comes more easily if they write at the same time every day. Some prefer to write in the morning, the time of day Henry David Thoreau called “the awakening hour,” before they become preoccupied with the incidentals of their daily routines.

Some writers make appointments with themselves to protect their writing time. They believe that keeping a regular writing schedule helps their minds and bodies develop a kind of rhythm, so that when the time comes to write, they are more likely to have the energy and concentration that writing demands. Some even reserve a certain place in their home or office where they do nothing but write. They don’t balance their checkbooks there, and they don’t talk on the phone there. When they sit in that certain place, it’s time to write. By playing to their natural rhythms and cycles, they find that their minds and bodies are ready for the difficult task of writing.

On the other hand, many on-the-job writers find it difficult or impossible to reserve a particular time of the day for writing. Whatever your situation, be as regular and disciplined as possible. The point is not to wait for inspiration.

Know the tricks of the trade.

In addition to the self-imposed expectation that you will write perfect copy in a single draft, there may be other obstacles that prevent you from getting started, and these obstacles may be related to deeply personal issues. To some extent, you must figure out the causes for these obstacles and discover your own methods for overcoming them.

Nevertheless, you can learn from the experience of other writers. Simply reminding yourself that writer’s block is a problem not just for you but for most writers is consoling. In addition to the approach I have advocated above, in which you begin creatively and you end critically, you might find the following specific tricks of the trade helpful:

• Forget about logical development and sequence. Start writing the easiest part of your document first, whether that be the opening, the middle, or the closing.
• Change the location of where you are writing. Go outside or downstairs to the lounge or to a crowded cafeteria. Try a new environment.
• Stand up from your writing desk, throw up your arms, and turn around three times. Jump up and down. Run in place. Get your heart pumping and your blood circulating.
• Make a list of key words you’ll use when you’re ready to begin writing.
• Write the opposite of what you’re trying to express, both in content and tone.
• Talk it out, either to yourself or to a friend, explaining what it is you’re trying to get down in writing.
• Make a list of all the things that prevent you from writing. Then, having made your list, either do the things you simply must do before you start writing, or make up your mind that they can wait until later and set your list aside.
• Compose yourself. Gather your thoughts. Make an outline, but don’t hesitate to change it along the way.
• Make certain you know your purpose, audience, and subject. Don’t let the unknown obstruct you.
• Write with honesty. Be direct, simple, straightforward in your expression. Concentrate on your meaning and how best to convey it. Worry about tone and style later when you revise.
• Write something every day—or at least regularly. When you write infrequently, you always start cold.
• Ignore that inner voice that says, “You can’t write.” Talk back to it. Say, “I can write. I am a good writer. This is only a draft.” Say it out loud if that helps. Shout it if you need to.
• Imagine you have only one minute to tell your reader why you are writing. Start talking. Don’t stop for sixty seconds. Now, write for sixty seconds, again without stopping.
• Think of your reader as your best friend. Picture a kind face, a warm, friendly smile. Imagine this friend saying with great concern and sincerity, “Tell me. What’s on your mind?”
• Give in to it. Sometimes the best way to overcome writer’s block is to accept it. Don’t fight it. If your mind is swirling with thoughts and anxieties when you sit down to write, maybe your mind is trying to tell you something. Maybe it needs a little time to do some sorting. Don’t feel guilty about wasting time. The time you spend daydreaming and collecting your thoughts may turn out to be the most productive and creative part of your day.

Overcome the Challenges of Long Writing Projects

If you have ever tried to complete a long report or book-length document by a certain date, you know how it feels to write under pressure. Here are some of the lessons I have learned—or relearned—from my experience in writing this book, lessons that relate to how to find time in a busy life to complete a long-term writing project:

Reject the “I need a block of time” myth. If you wait for a block of time, you may never get started. I have a friend, a history professor, who tells his students that, rather than spending ten minutes worrying about a paper that is due next week, spend ten minutes making an outline or writing the first paragraph.

If you want to write, write. Do as the poet-doctor William Carlos Williams did: Write a few lines every day, no matter how tired you are from making your rounds.

Commit yourself to “seat time.” There’s only one way to complete a long writing project, and that’s with seat time. Some days the words will come easily. Most days they won’t. But if you’re not in your seat, they won’t come at all. So get your rear in gear and your derriere in the chair.

Give yourself credit for starting. Measure your success not by the number of pages you write each day, but by the consistency with which you bring yourself to the task. A good day is any day in which you devote some time to writing. Like a baseball batter on a hitting streak, see how many days you can go without breaking your string.

When your goal is simply to write every day, you feel good the moment you begin, and the question shifts from “Will I write?” to “When?”

Take it “bird by bird.” In her book by that title, Anne Lamott tells a story about her brother when he was ten. He had been given three months to write a report on birds. On the last day of summer vacation, her brother was “at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead” when, Lamott tells us, “my father sat down beside him, put his arms around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”

Take it one step at a time. Before you know it, you’re making progress, and once you’re making progress, you start feeling better about the prospects for completing your task.

Divide a long project into smaller tasks. Writing a book is a matter of accomplishing a number of specific tasks, such as thinking about your purpose, organizing your text, listing examples to use in supporting a particular point, and writing a particular paragraph. As the novelist Annie Dillard once said, “When you think about writing a book, you think it is overwhelming. But, actually, you break it down into tiny little tasks any moron could do.”

Use the slash-and-bracket method of drafting. Every writer develops particular tricks for making the process of writing as efficient as possible—or at least less inefficient than it otherwise would be. One practice I have found helpful is to mark alternative wording with slashes when I find myself unable to determine which version is better. This method allows me to continue drafting, knowing I have marked a choice to be made at a later time/I will make later. Not only does this method enable me to maintain momentum, but I find it easier to make the choice when I come back to it.

Square brackets also provide a convenient way to mark problems or points that need further development. [Give an example here?] If a word, sentence, or paragraph doesn’t sound right, mark the problem with brackets [Revise this?] and come back to it later. Well, you get the idea. Don’t let a problem or unresolved question hang you up. Keep moving.

Leave some things for later. As I discussed earlier—and as I continually remind myself—writing is a process. It goes better if you think in terms of writing in stages. The main thing is to keep moving. Save certain types of editing for later. Know when to say, “That’s good enough for now.” Those words won’t come easily if you’re the compulsive type. Just keep reminding yourself that you will come back later. Remember, your goal is to get it written, not right.

Don’t measure your progress too closely. Once you’ve started, keep going. Don’t look up too often. Pretty soon all those little bits of writing add up to something significant.

Finish your first bad draft. Don’t quit because you don’t like what you’ve written. You have to complete your first bad draft before you can start making it good. Remember: Editing is the easy part.

Expect to get bored. No matter how excited you are about your topic when you begin, expect your enthusiasm to ebb. Just keep going.

Look forward to the downhill side. To use my agent’s analogy, “Writing a book is like pushing a grocery cart up a hill. It’s slow going for the first half, but eventually you reach the top, and you can jump in and ride down.” That’s the part I look forward to.

Apply Principles of Time Management to Writing

The process of writing and the principles of time management share common ground. Both writing and managing your time make three demands of you: They require planning, organization, and discipline.

In Getting Things Done: The ABCs of Time Management, internationally known expert Edwin Bliss offers ten basic techniques of time management. Here’s how you can apply those techniques to your writing:

Plan your time. “You need a game plan for your day,” Bliss contends. “Otherwise, you’ll allocate your time according to whatever happens to land on your desk.” Likewise, when writing anything more complicated than a brief message or a routine document, you need an outline. Without one, you’ll tend to write whatever random thoughts occur to you. With one, you’ll write more logically and systematically.

Concentrate on the task at hand. Bliss’s notion that “people who have serious time-management problems invariably are trying to do too many things at once” explains two common causes of writer’s block: being too distracted to settle down to the assignment at hand, and trying to draft and edit at the same time.

As I suggested earlier, to increase your concentration, write down your purpose in a simple declarative sentence. Then write your first draft as freely and quickly as you can, knowing you’ll come back and edit later.

Take breaks. As Bliss points out, if you work for long periods without taking breaks, “energy decreases, boredom sets in, and physical stress and tension accumulate.” The same applies to writing. Even if you become engrossed in your topic, take periodic breaks. Stand up, move around, keep your blood flowing—but avoid distractions that might draw your attention completely away from what you are writing.

Avoid clutter. Because, as Bliss contends, “you can think of only one thing at a time,” and because “you can work on only one task at a time,” you will work—and write—more efficiently if you organize your papers, clear your desk regularly, and maintain an orderly, comfortable environment.

Accept imperfection. Don’t be a perfectionist. Striving for excellence is “attainable, gratifying, and healthy,” but striving for perfection is “often unattainable, frustrating, and neurotic.” Being a perfectionist is not only a “terrible waste of time,” it’s also an impediment to timely communication. Besides, given the complexity of English grammar and syntax, not even the experts agree on what constitutes “perfect” writing.

Learn how to say no. Bliss considers the “frequent use of the word no” to be “perhaps the most effective ... of all the time-saving techniques ever developed.”

The same applies to editing. Avoid falling in love with your prose. Learn to say no to any word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph that “does not contribute to your goals.” Also, have the discipline to say no to less demanding, more enjoyable, perhaps more immediately gratifying activities that will prevent you from writing.

Don’t procrastinate. The important thing is to get started. If at first your progress seems insignificant, remember the words of E.L. Doctorow, who once compared writing a novel to driving a car at night: “You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

Develop Good Writing Habits

Writing, for most people, does not come easily. As with any challenging task, however, you can learn to overcome the obstacles by developing good habits.

Use a dictionary. A good dictionary is an essential tool for a writer. Use it to look up words whose meanings are only vaguely familiar to you. If all you need to know is how to spell or pronounce a word, use an online dictionary. But if you want advice on preferred usage or information on the roots of a word to help you remember it, use a hardcopy dictionary like The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (my favorite).

After you have looked up a word, move it from your larger comprehensive vocabulary, which you depend on as a listener and reader, into your smaller expressive vocabulary, which you depend on as a speaker and writer.

Use a thesaurus when you can’t think of the right word. As I discussed in chapter eight, whether printed or programmed, a thesaurus is an indispensable tool for the writer—when used properly. Use the thesaurus to remind yourself of words you have some experience with and feeling for. As a rule, however, don’t use a synonym if you are encountering it for the first time.

Write with a style manual within reach. Don’t guess at the conventions of language, punctuation, and numbers usage. If you are uncertain whether a comma should go before or after the closing quotation marks or whether you should spell a number as a word or write it as a figure, look it up in a style manual such as William Sabin’s The Gregg Reference Manual. (See Appendix V for a list of recommended resources.)

Write at the same time every day. As I discussed before, try to write at the same time, and in the same place, every day. The point is not to wait for inspiration.

Be pragmatic about getting the job done. As the poet Carolyn Forché told a creative writing class at the University of Minnesota, it’s important to write at the same time and at the same place every day, even if only for half an hour, “so the Muse will know where to find you. Otherwise, she goes to the next house.”

Start early. Start writing as soon as possible after you have your assignment. The sooner you begin to write (or to “compose” your thoughts), the sooner your subconscious mind can start working on the material. Even if you don’t have time to make a substantial start on your assignment, it’s still a good idea to take a few moments to jot down some notes or outline your main points. You may be surprised at how much easier it is to write your first draft when you have begun in this way.

Whenever possible, let time be on your side.

Take time to revise your writing. Remember, good writing is revised writing. Except for the most routine and straightforward writing assignments, don’t expect your first draft to be your final draft. It almost always takes more than one try to get it right. And as I discussed earlier, after you have written your first draft, set your piece aside to let it “rest” or “go cold” before giving it a final reading. Allowing some time to pass will help you see what you have written from the reader’s perspective.

Don’t let the negative voices get you down. Critics have been putting down writers—sometimes with great wit and scathing cruelty—for as long as writers have been writing. Two hundred years ago Samuel Johnson (as I noted earlier) offered this devastatingly clever appraisal to an aspiring author: “Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.” Even Groucho Marx got into the act when he stung S.J. Perelman with this unforgettable zinger: “From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.”

A participant in one of my writing workshops once told me, “Before I started this job, I used to enjoy writing, but now I hate it. No matter what I write, my boss tears it to pieces.” A colleague who heads the writing assessment program at a California university told me about one of her professors in graduate school who would comment on each paper as he handed it back to its author. Once, to emphasize his displeasure, the professor said, “And here’s what I think of Ms. Smith’s paper.” Then he pulled a lighter from his pocket, lit the paper, and dropped it burning into a metal wastebasket. Mortified, the student burst into tears and left the classroom.

In Writing to Learn, William Zinsser describes a “fear of writing” that “is planted in countless people at an early age—often, ironically, by English teachers, who make science-minded kids feel stupid for not being ‘good at words,’ just as science teachers make people like me feel stupid for not being good at science.” According to Zinsser, “Whichever our type, the loss of confidence stays with us for the rest of our lives.”

No wonder so many people hate to write. For them, writing is less an opportunity for expression than an invitation for humiliation and ridicule. The problem, of course, is that much of what is written does need correction. Even the most accomplished writers can profit from the suggestions of a good editor.

Work with an editing partner or mentor. Every writer needs a good editor. Ask for suggestions and criticisms from a colleague, friend, or editor. If something is wrong with your writing or if something could be improved, it’s better to find out before you send or submit your final copy.

Find a colleague, friend, or mentor—someone you know will be positive and constructive in his or her criticism (preferably someone more skilled and experienced than you)—and work together proofreading and editing. Make a deal: They read your stuff; you read theirs. In committing yourself to help another writer improve, you might find that you are helping yourself.

Make a Lifetime Commitment

Your relationship with language is dynamic. No matter how skilled and accomplished you are as a writer, there is always something else you can learn, always another insight you can acquire, always a new trick or technique you can add to your repertoire. One of the most exciting and exasperating things about being a writer is that your work is never done. You can never completely develop your skills, and you will never solve all the mysteries of language.

Here are four things you can do to improve your writing over time:

Read. Read for pleasure. Read for fun. Read every day, if possible. Read authors you find especially engaging, including some who challenge you, and read everything they have published.

Spend time in the company of good writers. If all you ever read is mediocre writing, your chances of writing anything better are slim. If all you ever read is bad writing—well, you get the idea.

Reading develops your ear. It gives you a feeling for the rhythm and cadence and flow of language. It suggests the range of possible sentence structures and patterns. It helps you realize the possibilities for imaginative use of figurative language and various figures of speech. Perhaps most important, reading expands your vocabulary.

Just as you wouldn’t try to be a musician without listening to music, don’t try to be a writer without reading.

Learn the rules of language so that you can write with confidence. Be intentional about improving your writing. Identify your weaknesses and deficiencies. If there are gaps in your writing background, fill them. Learning the rules and conventions of language isn’t rocket science, but it does require some effort, attention, and time. As a matter of practice, whenever you have a question about correct grammar, punctuation, or usage, don’t guess. Look it up. As I suggest above, keep a style manual within reach when you write.

Learn the rules so that you can put them behind you. Learn the rules so that you will know when you must follow them and when you may break them.

Practice. If you want to be a good pianist, you have to practice playing the piano. If you want to be a good writer, you have to practice writing.

Write frequently. Better yet, write frequently and write in a variety of styles and genres, from journal entries and informal letters to executive summaries and long reports.

Some fiction writers like to write poetry on the side to keep their ears sharp, just as some jazz musicians like to play classical music to work on their techniques. Whether you are a musician, a writer, or a surgeon, you’ll perform with more precision if you stay in practice.

Study good writers and imitate their style. Keep a file of writing samples that impressed you in some way. Go back to them from time to time and remind yourself of what you liked about them. Then try to create the same effects in your own writing.

I remember the time the critic and editor Malcolm Cowley visited our creative writing class at Vanderbilt. After entertaining us with stories about Fitzgerald, Wolfe, and Hemingway, he offered this advice: The next time you read something that you find compelling, a passage whose language seems extraordinarily well crafted, mark the passage, come back to it, and study it. Read it out loud. Copy or type it over word for word. Do whatever you can to get close to the language that moved you. In other words approximate as nearly as possible the author’s experience in choosing those particular words, to see how they feel in sequence and in relationship with one another, and to experience how the sentence structures unfold. Then write something like it.

In this way, he told us, you discover a writer’s secrets and you make them your own.

Years later, when reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved, I came across a passage that sent chills down my spine. It began, “The stove didn’t shudder as it adjusted to its heat.” Before I realized what was happening, Sethe’s haunted house was trembling and pitching, a table came rushing across the floor, and Paul D had grabbed it by its leg and was bashing it about, “wrecking everything, screaming back at the screaming house.”

I marveled at Morrison’s uncanny ability to glide effortlessly between the natural and the supernatural worlds. How did she do it? I wanted to know.

I took Cowley’s advice and copied and studied the passage. I took it apart and wrote another passage like it. Although I will never write like Toni Morrison, I learned something from her about writing with conviction and about using sudden, unexpected movement as a narrative technique.

I hope you will do the same.