Getting better at what you do

You are writing almost every day. But you don't know if it is good enough? And if you do know if it is good enough or not, you do not know how to make it better than what it is?

Repetition in any action does not improve what you are doing. I have been driving for more than 20 years. Though I consider myself to be a fairly competent driver. Yet I am not good enough to venture out on a race track. Nor do I know enough to be a motoring journalist or a car designer.

I would be able to drive a delivery truck or a bus but I don't like driving enough (and I hate commuting) to try and make a living from it that way.

The only way I will get better as a driver is if I take a course in advanced driving skills. And even then it will not work unless I practice what I learned.

So how do you get better at what you do?

You need a basic feedback loop. Anybody that intends to become better, a professional athlete, a business owner, or a race car driver get a feedback loop. They work out what is the critical measures they want to improve and they measure themselves against that standard.

Seconds, money, speed - what is your critical measure for writing?

Word count is one. But as I showed above, endless repetition does not guarantee improvement. Because there is no feedback loop. Your loop also needs an evaluative quality. And this evaluation aspect is the origin of all the writing rules you might come across.

Don't use first person. Show don't tell. No passive voice.

What you need to do is set up the rules you want to be measured at. Apply those rules to your writing and evaluate your writing according to those rules.

Because the only measure of improvement in your writing is what you measure yourself (that is once you are past the basic competencies). Gerhi Janse van Vuuren

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== Gerhi Janse van Vuuren is a writer. Read more of his articles at 2 Write a Book.com or visit his personal site at Gerhi.com ==

Links:

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