I really want to get better at writing. It's something I never really placed attention to or focus on during college, and now I'm really regretting it. I now recognize it as an essential skill that's much more difficult than I initially thought.<p>I've been thinking of ways of helping my creative writing. Obviously practice makes you better, but I wish I could contact someone qualified with a good background who can really help look over and give me very helpful critiques.<p>I've started a blog as well to help motivate me and increase my online presence, but too be honest I'm extremely hesitant and embarrassed to post because I'm not content with the quality of my work, and I don't feel I have good subject matter to write on.<p>I wanted to ask the HN community if they had any tips, advice, perspectives, or resources that might be worth looking into. I also figured I wasn't the only one who could benefit from some assistance.<p>Thanks!
I don't know what I'm talking about, but keeping that in mind, you should consider the following attack strategy: write a lot, and write weird. For example, force yourself to avoid certain things when writing: avoid "I", avoid forms of "is". This is not a rule of How Writing Should Be Done, it's just an exercise, the same way that avoiding goto is an important exercise for novice programmers. I'm sure you could think of other options, like making each paragraph be comprised of one long sentence, or taking a second pass to your work and compressing it into as few words as possible, or picking a small set of words and abusively trying to work them in as much as possible. Maybe these tricks are no good but will just make writing more interesting so that you do it more.
I have not read it myself (yet), but Garr Reynolds (<a href="http://www.presentationzen.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.presentationzen.com/</a>) recommends this one "Brenda Ueland: If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit". Maybe that helps.
I have only recently started writing and found the HN community very friendly. Just get it out there, submit it and get feedback. Just write about what keeps your mind occupied. You will notice that once you start you'll continue to have new ideas.<p>Best of luck!
> I don't feel I have good subject matter to write on.<p>Don't write publicly if you don't want, but:<p>What did you have for breakfast this morning?
How did you get home from work today?
Tell me about the last time you went grocery shopping.<p>Etc. Pick these or any other asinine, boring topic and try to make it interesting. IMHO, it's good to do this in two steps. First, just sit down and write, <i>continuously</i>, without judgment or editing, write a <i>lot</i>. Then, figure out how editing can make it better.
Lyn Dupre book is worth a look. She has copy-edited Don Knuth, amongst others.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/BUGS-Writing-Revised-Guide-Debugging/dp/020137921X" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/BUGS-Writing-Revised-Guide-Debugging/d...</a>
For other people interested check out <a href="https://www.kibin.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.kibin.com/</a>. I haven't used it myself (yet) but it's basically an open source way of having your writing edited by others.
Maybe this will help: <a href="http://www.copyblogger.com/become-a-better-writer/" rel="nofollow">http://www.copyblogger.com/become-a-better-writer/</a>