by Gordon Hamilton

Created on: April 03, 2009

Learning to write online is a concept which can have two very distinct and different meanings. It can refer to the process of learning to write and setting about achieving the desired goal online, or it can refer to learning to write in a fashion which is acceptable and successful online.

The process of learning to write is one which every writer has to go through to one extent or another. Right from the time where they learn to do so in a literal sense - probably as children at school - onwards, they are developing what they hope will be a skill which can bring them success and prestige, as well as perhaps a liveable income.

The best way of learning to write to any writing discipline is, in short, to write to it. The aspiring writer has to practise writing, experiment with different styles and techniques, read back over what they have written with a critical eye and determine how they can perhaps improve upon it. This should be an ongoing process for any writer as there is always room for improvement in their writing.

There are a great many who will of course pay for a course to help them learn to write. There are some such courses which of course are run online by very highly skilled writing professionals but I tend to be wary of these courses and what they claim to offer. Writing is a game where no two people's opinions are the same and what one editor tells a writer will be the extreme opposite of what another may tell them. In a similar sense, I believe this to be true of writing "coaches" and consider the danger here to be that the "coach" essentially stifles the aspiring writer's creativity by asking them to write to subjects or in a style to which they are simply not suited.

Learning to write and learning to write in a style which is acceptable online can be very successfully combined in the sense that we may, "Kill two birds with one stone." What we should do in order to achieve this is start a blog. We should do so on a subject upon which we are extremely knowledgeable and make short regular posts, experimenting with how we include our information in different ways. As our blog grows, we can look at starting another one that allows us two different ways in which to practise our writing each day.

When we feel that we have reached a stage where we are fairly competent writing to our subject, we can join a site such as Helium, write articles and see how they are rated by others on the site. We may even receive helpful comments or constructive criticism from other site users. As we develop on Helium in this way, we will be learning both about our own writing skills and how writing works in the online medium. There is even the Leapfrog facility where we can go back and attempt to improve upon our earlier, perhaps inferior, articles.

Learning to write online can therefore be seen to be an extremely beneficial procedure, free of charge, and perhaps even an excellent launch pad from which to move on to other things.

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