Improve Your Writing Through the Power of Observation

Article by Cris Freese. 17 July, 2015. Writer’s Digest.

“Athletes practice. Musicians practice. As a writer, you need to do the same. Whether you havedreams of writing a novel, a memoir, or a collection of poems, or you simply want to improve your everyday writing, you’ll need to build your skills by way of practice.

Doing so includes making use of all of your faculties, including the act of observation. The following excerpt is taken from Barbara Baig’s How to Be a Writer, which is an empowering, down-to-earth book that gives you the tools you need and tells you what (and how) to practice so that you can become the writer you want to be.

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The power of observation—of being aware of and noticing what is around us—is a natural human faculty that we are all born with. In many of us this faculty has atrophied from lack of use; but, with practice it can, in time, be regained.”