Something profound (like usual, duh) will be written here later. edit: Now it's later, Annie! Tips On How To Improve Your Writing: I'm not saying I'm a great writer, because I'm obviously not, but I'm also not so modest as to be afraid to say that I'm better than most. Anyway, these are just some things I try to do to keep it fresh. This is usually just a journal where I put my thoughts down without really thinking, stuff that happens to me and stuff that's on my mind, so if you're wondering why you should take advice from a wanker like me, well, you probably have good reason to wonder. Read, read, read, imitate, read, read, and imitate! Read the greats like Hemingway, Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, Dickens, etc. Don't focus on shit like Stephen King (even though his stuff can certainly be entertaining)--it is not good writing! Do your best to imitate what the greats have written but incorporate your own style into your writings to make it something you can call your own. Keep a journal! Write whatever is on your mind. Don't try to write something profound all the time. Most of the time you will not write something profound, and that's fine. The simple act of writing improves your skill. Keep a pen and paper nearby at all times, when your walking in the store or sitting in class. One mere sentence that comes to your mind can be built upon to create pages from. Don't let it pass your mind and forget! Write it down! Write without thinking. Try to keep a steady flow going without taking even seconds to think to form the next sentence. Some of the most interesting things I've ever written have came from this style. Don't mind if it doesn't make sense. You can go back and edit aspects that are worthy of saving. Write at night. I rarely write in the daytime. I'm not sure why, but a lot of my best thoughts come to me far after the sun has set. Don't write when you don't want to. This will only feel like labor and will often result in boring sentences and thoughts. When you look at something, don't just think about it, but think about how to write it if you had to. Try to 'see what is unseen.' Look at things that have been looked at millions of times over but form a new perspective on them. If you want to write about confusion then imagine the perspective of a foolish dog and write what you feel it is 'thinking,' then incorporate those thoughts into your own emotions. If you want to write about how a house looks, pay special attention to the way it changes as your own perspective changes. Day, dawn, night, angles, and visual limitations all have a tremendous effect on how something appears. Think of something you find 'boring', like a tree, and make it 'come to life.' Write as if the tree is an animal and it incites great fear in you. Think of the leaves as objects they aren't, such as bombs from a plane, hairs on a human arm, or fixtures on a building. Turn the everyday sights into objects a person feels that they should be privileged to have a mere glance at. Or, instead of writing about the tree, write the absolute most you can about one single shard of its bark. If you can write a lot about small things, you'll have no trouble writing even more about the entirety of the object. Pay attention to the grammatical rules, but don't let them become limitations to you. Don't worry if a sentence doesn't have a subject and a verb or if it's infested with too many commas. You can achieve many unusual and different literary effects this way. Don't be afraid to use a thesaurus and a dictionary when you're writing. It's not cheating. You'll have a very difficult time expanding your vocabulary if you don't. Time after time, you'll notice that you'll reach for those aids less often, but it takes time. Be patient. Be critical of what you write. It's okay to be proud of something, but always look for ways to improve it. Keep a saved filed a what you've written months or even years ago and compare it to what you have written recently. You will most likely see great improvement and it will give you motivation to keep improving. Experiment with the effects that drugs produce in your writing. Some a cigarette quick and write while the buzz is still in you. Take a Benedryl or two for the anti-anxiety effects and write. Have a few drinks. Take some pills. Whatever. Anything. Just don't come to rely on this as a means to write. Let the substances open parts of your brain that have remained untouched. Don't watch TV. Read books. TV won't help your writing. Write in silence, write with music. Write in different rooms in different positions. The atmosphere and environment you are in can have varying effects on what you produce. Try to imagine a specific audience to write for. If you're writing something for your grandma or for your girlfriend they will sound different, or they probably should. But write for yourself, too. Look to your own experiences as well as others for material. Imagine how another may perceive a situation differently from you and write from their perspective. Don't use cliches. No one wants to hear that you shot out of bed like a rocket or it rained cats and dogs. Boring and dull is what that is. Metaphors, analogies, similes, and the like are valuable characteristics to insert into your writing, but don't go overboard. Every other sentence doesn't need to be 'like' something other than itself. Sometimes plain, definite, and to the point is the way to go. That's all for now. Yeah, I wanna be a writer and see what is yet unseen. I've got a ways to go, I know.