Artists - just like athletes - have to do exercises. I’m not talking about stretching out the muscles in your hands; I’m talking about stretching out your brain.
No, it’s not that gross.
Visual artists have to draw things from different perspectives. Musicians have to play scales. Actors have to assume characters they would never really want to play. And writers have to write things they don’t mean to write.
There are the traditional exercises: describe something, write down directions, find words that rhyme with orange (just kidding). These are good things to do if you’re working on creativity or clarity.
My students never come to me because they’re having problems with creativity. They come to me because they have problems with the basics of writing something for school or work. I spend several hours assessing them, identifying the actual problem. Then I spend several hours making them practice that problem.
No, not fix the problem. Practice it. Again and again. If you have problems with leaving out capitals, then i want you to write an entire essay with no capitals. (make it a long essay, not an effortless paragraph or two.) If you like capitals too much, THEN WRITE AN ENTIRE ESSAY IN CAPITALS. Comma happy? Then, put, a, comma, between, every, word. Go ahead and split all your infinitives, end every sentence with a preposition, run your sentences on for pages, and use every contraction available. Just make sure your writing is purely erroneous. There shouldn’t be one thing done properly.
When you’ve practiced your mistake to the point where it’s perfect (you’ll know), then go through your paper and correct the mistakes. They’ll stand out clearly. Use a nice, acid-green pen or something, so it looks pretty. Tape your masterpiece to the wall above your desk. You’ll find that the three pages or so will be enough to train your brain to think differently, to see the errors differently.
Then, when your formal writing is perfect, you can take your imperfections and write for lolcats, or become the next e.e. cummings, because formal writing isn’t the only type of writing.
Tags: Exterminating the Bugs in Your Writing, proofreading, punctuation, spelling, writing exercises