3 Reasons Critiquing Can Improve Your Writing Craft

http://ajflowers.org/blog/3-reasons-why-critiquing-can-improve-your-writing-craft

There you are, sitting with your morning coffee, a warming laptop and a small journal of jumbled notes. After you finish your first draft and begin the revising process, you keep finding the same mistakes over and over again… Why does this keep happening?

I think this is a common problem most writers have to endure. When writing the draft, you can’t just “pre-edit”. You let the words come out… adverbs, misused commas and repetitions galore.

We are all on a quest to improve our writing. But do you know one of the best ways you can improve your writing? Stop looking at your own work and try to edit someone else’s. Wait, did I read that correctly? Yes! Go edit someone else’s work.

Why? I’m so glad you asked.

1. You are not emotionally attached.

The best thing about looking at work you didn’t write is that you are not in-love with it. You didn’t birth it from your heart and soul, so it’s free game to tear it to shreds. When you are in this state of mind, you can easily find parallels to your own work.

For example, you just heartlessly cut out two paragraphs of info-dump. You aggressively type: “Completely irrelevant! Cut it all!” Then you gasp. You did the very same thing in your own first Chapter! Time to look in the mirror.

Read Reasons 2 and 3 Here!