CWC article Tri-Valley Branch

Here's the article I wrote for the Tri-Valley branch of the California Writer's Club this month-a little condensed. Hope you enjoy it.

Before I started this month’s article for the newsletter, I mulled over various topics to write about and settled on how to become a better writer. Just for fun, I googled online writing classes. There are literally 35,000,000 including creative writing, journaling, poetry, boot camps, college classes, well-known writing communities and more. I didn’t google in person classes, workshops, seminars, week long or writing retreats, so you can imagine how many places there are to learn and grow your writing life.

With the plethora of choices, where do you begin? With so many directions it can be a daunting.


Read a lot. A lot. Read authors you’d like to write like, read genres you like to write in, read for fun, read to educate, read to get new ideas, read books about craft, plot, character. Many of these books suggest exercises so that you can put what you’ve read into practice. Remember, library books are free (unless you keep them too long and then it’s a nickel a day!)

Practice. Practice may not get you to perfectionism when it comes to the written word, but you’ll get a lot closer if you put pen to paper every day. Julia Cameron suggests three hand written pages each morning. Carolyn See suggests one thousand words a day. If you do this, Julia Cameron guarantees it will change your life. My own experience is that if you do it in the morning it’s done.

Can’t think of anything to write about? No excuse! Start with a phrase: Right now I am, and take it from there. There are a number of writing books that offer phrases or sentence starters to get your engine started.

Join a critique group or meet informally with friends to read each others’ works. It helps. We learn by sharing, that’s why good facilitated writing groups are so successful. You benefit from the critique of each member’s work.

Look for opportunities to publish your work even if it’s for free. Why? It builds confidence, gets your name out into the writing community, and helps you build a platform. If you choose to ‘specialize’ in a particular topic, find a newsletter that might need help, build up credentials, then start to query magazines.

Join a writing community. You receive this newsletter because you’ve joined the CWC Tri-Valley writing community. There are also associations, for example, that specialize in romance writing, journalism, memoir. Check them out. They might lead you down a path you had no idea could be so much fun.