I want to get better at writing, and I have an idea. Do you have any suggestions?

Depends on whether you’re open to outside criticism of the work or not. If you are thick-skinned enough to take an occasional negative review, you might try blogging. Internet critics can be overly harsh at times. Some just rant because it’s in their nature, or because they are having a particularly bad day. But some are also insightful and will give you valuable pointers on how to improve your work. Just developing the ability to discriminate between those two types of criticism is a valuable skill well worth learning.

Best of success in developing your writing talents, whatever road you select to get you there. Being a person of letters is a life skill that pays in virtually everything you set your hand to.

I really love sci-fi, maybe you can make up some new futuristic society. Think Lord of the Rings or Star Trek for inspiration, or whatever is interesting to you. I am very interested in Native American Indians, so when I write, I tend to make up stories about them, and since I’m interested and have learned a lot about them, the stories are better.

Poetry is always nice, too, and it’s a little easier as you start to write.

Years ago I was a technical writer then editor of a trade magazine. My first boss told me ‘Writers write”. To get better at writing, do a lot of writing and submit them for critical review. During the summer often you will find creative writing courses at local community colleges. As you continue to write, you will see the amount of red on your copy decrease, and you will find your style and your quality will get better. Make a journal, write a page a day, and turn it over for someone to critically read your entries. The key is, to get better, you have to communicate what is in your head to copy in a clear and correct manner that worn’t bore the pants off the reader.

To get better, write, write, write. I think your idea is OK, but 10 minutes is not very long to do it. If you could lengthen the time that would be good.

Ten minutes might be plenty for a start if you have been blocked about writing. You can always continue with the same subject in the next 10 minute freewriting period. You might also consider doing your writing by hand in a journal so you are not distracted by Internet candy.

Some subjects:

My Earliest Childhood Memory
A Place that Made me Happy
A Role Model
A Possession that Means Much to Me
A Childhood Friend
A Loss

I taught Freshman Comp for some years. You can pm me if you need more ideas.

What I saw this morning
The last thing I heard last night
What I smell when I close my eyes, and what memories it brings to mind
what was the last thing that caused me to laugh, and was it a chuckle or a brief “HA!” or a giggle, or…??

I love @ETpro ‘s blogging idea!

Writing courses are great. You can learn better writing skills not only from the teacher but also from your fellow classmates.

Memories of an elderly relative
A description of a McDonalds restaurant and its customers
Yourself as described by your cat.

@flutherother: Now those sound like fun.

I’ve participated in several workshops that included guided writing exercises. The leader read a brief selection aloud, either prose or poetry, and then gave us a prompt and told us to write—freely, uncritically, and without pausing—for just five timed minutes. I remember that one of those prompts was “hands” and another was “a hat.”

At the end of each brief session, she asked for several volunteers to read aloud what they’d written. I think both the readers and the rest of the group were amazed at how much and how feelingly and coherently a person could write in such a short time.

I remember that “hands” caused me to think instantly of my mother’s hands, and that theme led me to entirely different places from those of fellow participants. I covered several pages and found myself recalling things I didn’t know I had remembered. I wrote things that would never have come up if I’d been trying to answer direct questions (such as “What do you remember about your mother’s hands?”).

I find prompts like that much more productive than highly structured ones or anything that uses an actual or implied superlative (my most, best, worst, first, etc., or favorite anything).

You might want to take a look at a book such as Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones to help guide your use of your writing time.

My tenth grade English teacher had an interesting idea on encouraging writing. He required that, in addition to assignments, that we submit some piece of writing each week. It could be any length, fiction or non-fiction, whatever we felt like writing down. The writing would have no impact on our grade.

The viewpoint that I eventually adopted was that I had a guaranteed captive audience of one. Whatever I wrote, he was forced to read it. I found that the assignments gave me a chance to flesh out ideas that I had floating around in my head.

So here is my take on this. Writing is intended as communication. Yes, some great writers have written memoirs or diaries not originally intended to be seen by others, but what motivates most of us is the chance to communicate with someone else. Try to find someone you would be willing to share your writing with. You might submit it to Fluther. If you tell us in advance that what you are writing is largely to exercise your writing skills then we will take a sympathetic and encouraging attitude.

Check out also “Bird by Bird :Some Instructions on Writing and Life”: http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Some-Instructions-Writing-Life/dp/0385480016/ref=bxgy_cc_b_text_b by Anne Lamott.

There are wonderful small and manageable exercises.

Here’s where the title came from, speaking of elegant prose.

”“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”

Periodically I will read something that makes me sit up and take notice, learn something new, push me to do more research, cry or laugh. I reread the prose to see what it is that got my attention and also how it touched me.

Or as many suggest, just whang something out. Writing begets writing, or at least in my case it always have.

(It’s better to say “I want to write better” rather than “I want to be better at writing.” It’s not the grammar but the idiom.)

I agree: Bird by Bird is another excellent one. I love Lamott’s advice to write just what you can see in a one-inch frame.

Edit; …it always has, speaking of grammar.

I would go with @ETpro‘s idea – I would do so myself but I shall be typing away like crazy on a distance course covering business and management.
I think it depends on what takes your fancy as to what you write about.
People with mental health issues might blog about their day, how they felt, how they dealt with their everyday stresses and strains, people with a passion for holistic therapy might blog about various things like the benefits of certain oils in aromatherapy, people interested in sociology might choose to blog about the things they notice living in a multi-cultural society (which is ever increasingly likely to be the case in the West at least).
Maybe you don’t want to write (in a technically inaccurate manner!) about that kind of thing, maybe far fetched stories of a fantastical nature or more your thing but that makes no difference, writing is still writing regardless of what it is about.
It could be about anything, and the great thing about this is that with many blog sites, you can have people leave comments and you could ask them to provide constructive feedback on your writing – which is why I think @ETpro‘s idea is such a good one.
Not everyone has a clear grasp of the English language regardless of it’s guise (American English, or just plain ol’ English) but there are plenty of people out there who like to read blogs. If you have Facebook and a number of friends you could link your blog to Facebook or some other networking site and go from there.

In addition to all those great answers, it might be a good idea to carry a journal around with you. Not to write in, but to jot down ideas – assuming you want to write fiction. Names you like, for example. Clever things people said or did. Smells you like (or dislike), places…scary situations… Then, if you get stuck at any point, you can go through your lists of ideas. Good luck!

Write whatever you want whenever.
The more you write the better you will become at expressing yourself.
Join a writing club online.

Choose a writer whose writing you admire. I love Louis L’Amour’s descriptive style. I’ve read enough of it that it often ends up in my own writing.