by Elton Gahr

Created on: June 07, 2009

Writing is both a craft and an art. This means that there are skills that will go into every piece of writing that you create to make it better, but also that ever thing you write has its own distinctive personality. This means that the way you tell one story or write one article may not work for the next. This can be frustrating for the author who finds himself writing something he doesn't like as much as his previous work. So how do you consistently create writing that is your best work?

The most important tool in writing well is passion. If you are bored by the subject you are writing on it will show through to your writing and the reader will find himself bored as well. Your best work will always be on subjects that you care about.

Being prolific is another excellent strategy for creating excellent work. It is very difficult to make a single great story, but it is also difficult to write 50 bad stories. This is a less effective strategy when writing long pieces of work but sometimes when writing something short the only option is to write it down and see if it works.

Being flexible is also vital to the writing process. Sometimes a perfect first line will pop into your head but as you begin to formulate the rest of the article you discover that it doesn't leave you anyplace to go. A perfect first line can sometimes make the rest of your article feel redundant so consider the possibilities. Perhaps the perfect line would make a better end for your article than the beginning or perhaps it needs to be changed into a question or thrown out entirely. Anytime you force yourself to stick with a plan after you know it is failing you will find yourself with writing that didn't meet its potential.

The final thing you must understand is that first drafts are rarely good. Truly good writing is made in the editing process. For the first draft the best thing you can focus on is not using the correct word or the perfect phrasing but getting down the basic idea as clearly and precisely as possible. Editing and writing are two different processes and when you try to combine them it is far easier to begin to self censor or even to get writer's block.

No matter how hard you work, sometimes the writing just isn't working. However, just like Thomas Edison the key to writing your best work is not to succeed on the first try, but to succeed eventually, so no matter if it takes one or a thousand stories to create the piece of work that you truly like keep writing and eventually you will write your best work.

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