How To Be An Effective Writer: 26 Tips from Meg Maker

In a session at the Wine Bloggers Conference titled “More Effective Writing in Your Blog” with Meg Houston Maker, Hardy Wallace, and Andy Purdue, Meg says there’s two ways to learn how to be a better writer: read and write. But you have to pay attention to what you read and write.

She  also offered us 24 Points on how to improve our writing:

1) writing is thinking and thinking is hard

2) write for the reader not yourself

3) assume limitless intelligence and no prior knowledge

4) tell a story no one else can tell

5) position yourself in the narrative–how do you know what you know (your perspective)

6) if you write on behalf of a business

7) find your lead and keep to it

8) you may know what you think at the start but you better know at the end

9) get to the point

10) the stronger your position, the more sober your prose

11) reserve !! for !! remarks

12) writing is therapeutic but not therapy

13) if you don’t know something you may have to find out

14) action is necessary to drama

15) texture prose but keep info in one place

16) keep reader asking why

17) don’t assume your experience is same as a readers

18) be ruthlessly authentic about your own experience

19) your voice comprises your vocab tone syntax opinions

20)  reread work next day and then publish

21) learn to work with an editor

22) need a good ending but doesn’t have to be clever and don’t trick your reader

23) the beginning has to match the end

24) if you succeed you’ll have achieved an intimate and beautiful act by penetrating another person’s mind

Contact The Write Alley by email at gwendolynalleyATyahooDOTcom if you’d like to learn how to apply these concepts to your writing projects!

This is an excerpt from this post on a panel presentation on effective writing featuring Hardy Wallace, Meg Houston Maker, and Andy Purdue. Read the full post about effective writing from the session at the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference in Walla Walla here.

I have a dozen posts up at Wine Predator now about my wine blogging adventure in Washington from Weds-Sunday with more to come. Check them out!

NOTE: Meg posted her talk on her blog, Maker’s Table.

Tags: how to improve your writing, how to write more effectively, Meg Houston Maker, Wine Bloggers Conference 2010, Wine Predator Gwendolyn Alley