How to Enhance Your Writing Skills? | By S.Sulianah | Grapholistic Podcast Episode 9 Season 12/9/2022
Hello Everyone!! Welcome back to another episode of Grapholistic Podcast. The pod all about handwritings and characters analysis. I am your podcaster, S.Sulianah.
In this episode, we are taking an in-depth look at Phase 4 in developing your communication skills. This episode I will teach you how to enhance your writing skills. These are practical ways that will be helpful to guide you when you find that your writing skills is a bit questionable. When you realized that it is not up to a certain standard or you feel like you need to improve it. Before you go ahead to apply for a course on how to write creatively or fluently to improve this writing skills of yours, the first step is to know what you want out of being skillful in your writing. Such as is it to get better grades, to write a convincing presentation, to publish your books, to write scripts and many other possible reasons. Because there are many courses out there that have different objectives. If you want to write for your books, then it is better to look for courses that is related to authorship and publishing instead of writing movie scripts. If you want to improve on your English writing skills as a beginner, it is better to look for courses that fits the level you are looking for. Focus on your main objectives. The second step is to focus first on your basics like grammar, forming sentences, using the correct vocabulary that suits the environment you are in. You can learn bombastic vocabulary which I used to do but nowadays I can rely on thesaurus to help add more spice to the words in my articles. As for conversation like this, I will usually use the simplest words depending on my audience. The third step is to keep writing. Write in private before publishing anything if you have no confident yet to let people read your contents. Start by writing on your diary about your daily feelings and thoughts. Write about your ideas. Write your own blogs. When you travel, write about your experiences, the food you eat, how you feel about the landscapes and the people you met. When you read books or articles, watch movies or went to a concert or listen to a music album, write your opinions about it like a review. Apply what you had learnt in those courses you had taken and test whether it is practical. If writing a full paragraph is too heavy for you, start with writing mind maps or in points first. Then, gradually from there build your momentum. The last step is to let people read what you had written. This part usually will develop when it is time. There will this moment when you feel comfortable sharing your thoughts and opinions and feelings to strangers. These could be through any forms like blogs, books, articles, websites, newspapers, magazines or even writing to your friends. It doesn’t mean that you felt that whatever you had written are perfect. I don’t believe in 100% perfection in writing because there will be at some points on the final article there could still be space for improvements even after final edit and after you published. How to Overcome Complacency to Complete Your Writing Projects?
I hope you get all the main four points. So, now what are the possible challenges that you might face while trying to achieve your target to be a published author, or well-known quality scriptwriter or even having A+ for your thesis, for your reports?
Firstly, remember that all these steps are to be done phase by phase. It takes time. When I say time means months and years. So, keep writing and keep learning. Do not give up. When your readers shared with you their perspectives on what you had written, listen. Then if you would like to tell them why you wrote like that, tell them your points respectfully. They are your readers and usually for me I will listen to those who reads my contents but not to people who criticized but didn’t even care about reading what I had written. So focus on your readers, your followers and your fans. Secondly, since your main goal is to be better in your writing skills, you have to be opened to learn and gain new knowledge. If you disagree with the instructor’s opinions and teachings in class or lectures, process the information first before telling her or him that you disagree or if you do not like what was shared. Be respectful. Also, there is no need to be embarrassed when you want to take any courses. Doesn’t matter your age, your status quo, or any excuses that you have in mind. When I was in secondary 1, I told my dad to enrol for me a creative English class because I feel like I was really weak with my English writing skills. The class was conducted in one of the community centers near my place and the instructor was quite detailed with the technicality which for me was what I needed during that time. I was not embarrassed to request my dad to help me register for it and telling him frankly I need to improve. And when I had completed that course, I felt one more level of confidence achieved because I get to learn new techniques which raised my knowledge and skills in writing. The third challenge is applying whatever you had learnt into actions. Because it will be such a waste of money and time if you don’t. Frankly, I don’t apply everything I had learnt because there are a load of information to be applied. So, I will selectively apply whenever I needed it. But don’t waste your money and time if you don’t think that is what you want. The fourth point is made sure you complete everything and never ever do anything halfway and leave without finishing your tasks. Again, it will be waste of money and time if you do things halfway or you study halfway. If you are 1/3 working on it, and you get tired of it like really you hated it not because you feel lazy about, if you really hated it, find out why. Is it because of the course’s syllabus or the instructor? Is it because somebody told you that it is not worth it? Is it because you have no energy to do it anymore? That is why before you embark on anything, or register your application, think first. And on the other type of challenges especially when you start writing a book, why are you doing it halfway? You have to ask yourself why can’t you finish it? Possible reasons when you are unable to finish the book you are writing are for instance there is still not much evidence to support your theory so you need more time, it could be because you think you have writers’ block, or probably you need to be heartbroken first to finish the poetry book. Find out the reasons and attempt to it immediately. Do not drag. Just for your information, whenever you have writers’ block, go grab a book and read. This will make you go back to writing fluently and complete it within the next few days. About the heartbroken or frustrated situations, sometimes this could be a trigger to make you write. My first poetry book that I published years ago it was an immediate decision which I managed to compile all the poems I had written over the years and publish it within 2 to 3 days. My 2nd poetry book was when I was a little bit heartbroken and I wanted to shut off the chapter immediately, so I wrote the last few pages in a day and then proceed to publish it after a week. As for my latest book, Be Brave : Uncensored Motivational Quotes, it took me about 8 hours to write all the quotes plus 2 days to add in details to the backstory of those quotes before I proceed to publish it. This was written when I wanted to vent my last few feelings of frustrations towards a group of individuals. So, because I wanted to change to a new chapter in my life, I had to let go of the past in that way. Make full use of your current situations to complete your writing tasks and goals. This is one of the possible important reasons to complete your writings.
Before I end this episode, I have a story to share with you, my personal journey when I was trying to improve my writing skills.
Over the years, my writing skills had the ups and downs moments. It was not like I became so good in a year after doing all those steps I just shared with you earlier. But there is one significant moment that happened about 14 years ago which made a lot of difference to this journey and I can say after that it goes up gradually in a positive way. 14 years ago when I was taking my part-time bachelor degree, I encountered with problems of not having good results for my psychology thesis. Just so you know, I was a business management student and psychology was foreign to me. The requirements for their reports are totally different from when I was doing my diploma in business management, 5 years before that. My thesis grades were like C, B- It was actually stressing me out in a way that my psychology modules grades were not as good as when I was taking my diploma. There was this classmate of mine who I admired who is now one of my closest friends. She is so good in her conversational and writing skills. I was exposed to her everyday which made me want to make sure I can speak well like her. She is so fluent in her conversation that sometimes she can be witty and will always make me laughed. I don’t laugh easily usually. And not only the way she speaks, apparently she is also good in writing. I mean her background study was in law and she probably speaks English with her family. Anyway, remember when I mentioned in earlier episode about having a model that you have to imagined you would like to be like as your target before you start improving on certain skills? Okay, this friend of mine was my model target. I said to myself literally, and in my prayers daily that I want to speak and write as fluent as her. Yes guys, if you pray at home whatever your beliefs are, please do it in a way that when you pray say in detailed. I have said this many times in my podcast too. Prayers is actually saying it out loud to yourself what you want and need, your problems, your thoughts. Some may called this the manifestation technique. For this case, I literally mentioned my friend’s name and the aspects that I want to improve for myself and which part of her skills that I would like to improve myself on. So, in terms of the communication aspect of her, I admired how she is so fluent when she speaks. She could express herself well and also so cool when she said something witty. I was on the other hand during that time more to like yes, was confident, but I feel like constricted to speak out what I feel or think. I felt that was because I was thinking about how my English language was not that good in terms of forming sentences and not using the correct grammar. Oh, before I forget, during this period, my reading habit was slacking too. I was too much focused on my daily work in office and responsibilities that I did not even spend time to read. Just so you know, this is one of the reasons. One day, I accidentally read one of her psychology thesis reports. I have no idea why all my classmates’ thesis reports were right in front of me during that time. And then, by reflex, I had a glance on how she writes and forms her sentences on that thesis while another friend of mine who was beside me checked who has the highest score in class. It was actually just a glance I am not kidding. I was not even reading a whole paragraph and I didn’t even try to read the whole thesis and understand what she wrote. This was what I found out. Usually, I will write a sentence like this, “The weather is hot”…for her, she made her sentence like this, “The weather is scorching hot.” That was what I caught from that seconds of glance on her psychology thesis. Then, what I did next was for my next psychology assignment, I tried to write exactly that way. Guess what everyone? My grade was usually B- and C. And then all my thesis and overall grades turned out to A+, A- after that. Funny, right? I was surprised with the results, it was crazy. I was like wow just like that? So, I used that formula for my marketing thesis too during that time and it works all damn good. I was so impressed how it turns out. Another most important moment in that timeline was what happened after that. Since then, my confidence to write kept building up. And I didn’t stop writing. It is not only about writing, but also the confidence to write the contents and let people to read. Because of that confidence, the difference was so obvious. This was like a big change that made a lot of difference in my interest to express myself and my feelings into words. Since then, I have been writing articles related to handwriting analysis, motivation, poems and even have the courage to publish it in my websites and also as physical books for people to read. I have been writing poems in my second language since I was in secondary school but never had the courage to publish it. But since that moment, like I said the confidence just keep building up. This is exactly the same when I am planning to produce and write the contents for this podcast. I know that there are so much for me to add or improve but I also know if I don’t start to speak and broadcast what I had written for my podcasts, I will never do it ever. I managed to get rid of all those excuses that I created for myself when I wanted to publish my podcasts. Excuses like I don’t like my voice, or I will be sharing my deepest secrets that I have kept and what if my friends or family listens to it. Or excuses like my room is not suitable for podcast recording because of the echo blah blah blah. So, what I did is to fight off those excuses and worries I had in my mind and go ahead with it anyway. Remember that it is not about perfection in the writing. For sure there will still be mistakes and errors in the use of grammar and how you express yourself. Nothing will be perfect until you start on practising what you have in mind into writing. Listen … the most important thing is you work on your goals. Then gradually make improvements along the way. Also meanwhile, please don’t stress yourself. Do all these steps at your own pace and whenever needed. Do not compare with others. You can use them as a model goal but never ever underestimate your potential. I would like to wish you all the best in developing your writing skills. A simple quote for you before I end this episode… Write, read, edit, re-write and remember to publish. See you next week. Byeee
To re-post these contents on your website, social media, blogs, articles, YouTube etc, please remember to cite the Author's name, S.Sulianah, and link to her company's website www.grapholistic.com
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