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6 Exercises to Improve Writing Skills for Career Growth

6 Exercises to Improve Writing Skills for Career Growth

As humans, we were born to communicate our feelings and thoughts through the oral and written word. However, conveying a specific message clearly and impactfully is something that most people struggle with. Many are still unaware of the importance of good writing skills for their career growth.

From well-written cover letters to effective communication at the workplace, sharply honed writing skills can immediately make you stand out from the rest.

Fortunately, you don’t have to do a lot to become a better writer. Ultimately, writing is a skill that can be sharpened with practice and some good strategies. In this post, we will give you 6 best exercises to improve your writing skills for career growth.

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    Morning Pages

This is an effective exercise that comes under freewriting. Freewriting is the practice of allowing your stream of consciousness to run uninterruptedly. Here, you pick a paper and start writing whatever comes to your mind without thinking about whether it is right or wrong.

Morning Pages is an exercise where you free-write as soon as you wake up. Set a target to write three pages, filling them with any thoughts that come to your mind. This exercise helps you enhance your writing speed as you become better at conveying your ideas through the written word.

  1. Proofread Your Writing

Proofreading ensures that your writing contains exactly what you intend to convey. While proofreading, you go over the entire work, adding or deleting anything you may have overlooked. It assists us in ironing out any minor, unnecessary mistakes. The main goal of proofreading is to enhance the quality of your written piece, ensuring there are no lingering or silly mistakes. It also corrects writing inconsistencies. 

To become a good writer, it is important to become an effective proofreader as well. You can easily master the art of proofreading through various online free courses. From learning the correct usage of punctuation to formatting and designing your text and content, just a few of these courses are enough to turn you into a master proofreader.

  1. Give a New Twist to an Old Story

Think of a story that your parent, friend, or colleague told you a long time ago, which has, for some reason, stayed in your mind. Write it down on a piece of paper. Since it is an old story, you might not remember all the details. This is where the magic happens.

You don’t have to remember those details. Create your own details using your imagination. It is a great creative writing exercise that will allow you to form new ideas and images and convey them in writing. 

  1. Use Writing Prompts

Writing prompts have several benefits. They give you ideas to unleash your creativity. Using prompts of different genres to write about new topics will make you use your imagination. Imagination positively improves creative writing and even general writing skills. It creates sensations or images that invigorate the creative parts of your brain.

When you have an image in your mind, you can turn it into a story, consciously manipulating it so it aligns with the context of your narrative.

From describing a childhood memory to writing a letter to your future/younger self, there are plenty of prompts you can find. So, pick one and start writing.

  1. Describe a Real Setting

Great writers ‘show’ things, people, and places through their writing rather than ‘telling’ them about it. This means that your writing shows the reader what your character did by describing their actions in specific detail. The description provides readers with crucial details about the character and settings of the story. 

A great exercise you can do to become better at describing things through writing is to visit a local café near your place and observe your surroundings. Don’t look for a specific thing; just take in place and the people. Now, write some aspects that stood out to you the most. Create a list of everything that you remember about the place.

After a few hours, go through your list and write a few paragraphs describing the setting in detail. Your goal is to make the reader feel like they are actually in that place you are talking about while reading your description.

  1. Read Like a Writer (and then Write Like One)

Reading like a writer refers to focusing on the elements that make up an outstanding written work. Great writing has a distinct style, choice of figurative language, and structure of the story, among other things. 

To read and write like a writer, read a poem you like and then write it in the same poetic form. If you prefer reading novels, grab your favorite one and copy one of the lines. Now, write a short story using that specific line.

Final Thoughts

To acquire great writing skills, you need to take time out to practice. Luckily, there are so many interesting exercises to boost your skills. Good writing skills will positively impact your career growth. From helping you create an excellent first impression with your resume to enhancing your credibility at the workplace by conveying information suitably, there are many benefits.

So, what are you waiting for? Use any of the activities above and take the first step to becoming a better writer today.