International Law

Social media will apparently make you a better writer

Over the weekend I cam across two separate blog posts that made the somewhat counter intuitive argument that blogging and Twitter actually make you better writers.  In a guest post on Problogger, freelance writer Jenny Cromie outlined five ways blogging can improve your writing.  However, before she did so explained how she needed to change her attitude to blogging:

In my mind, blogging was just a socially acceptable way for bad, wannabe writers to go mainstream with their poorly written rants and diatribes about things that made no difference to anyone else but the writer, a handful of family members, and other poor captive souls who loved the bloggers enough to read all their bad prose. In fact, if someone mentioned that they had a blog, my mind would click into sleep mode like my MacBook does after 10 minutes of inactivity. I?d think: Oh, one of those self-indulgent wannabe writer types. Where?s the nearest exit?

In short, blogging just seemed like a waste of time and effort. And I guess I had a snobbish writer attitude too?the idea that real writers didn?t need to blog because their writing was good enough to get published through more legitimate, mainstream ways. In my mind, push-button publishing was for the wannabes, not the real McCoys.

Fast-forward a few years. Now, everyone who is someone seems to have a blog these days. And if you?re a freelancer and you don?t have a blog, people sometimes wonder how you can bill yourself as a professional writer. Blogs aren?t just popular among individuals anymore either. Big companies have blogs. Mothers with babies have blogs. Teenagers with pimples and braces have blogs. And I wouldn?t be surprised to find out if some dogs have blogs too.

So this past year, I finally succumbed to this thing called blogging. I decided that since I was billing myself as a serious writer and freelancer, I needed to join the blogosphere. I started writing my own blog about freelance writing. And then one thing led to another and I eventually became the editor of The Golden Pencil, a b5media blog about freelance writing and how to build a successful freelance business.

And after all that herself she discovered that blogging made her a better writer as it helped her:

1. discover her voice;
2. connect with readers;
3. get feedback;
4. get disciplined; and
5. write faster.

Read more here.

But it is not just blogging that can improve your writing.  Dave Winer explains how Twitter makes you a better writer:

Twitter forces you to write concisely, and that makes for crisper, more direct, easier to read copy.  

I was reminded of this when reading a piece written by Dan Santow at Edelman PR, who offers a list of phrases that can be replaced by single words without loss of meaning.  

I realized you never see these phrases in Twitter-talk because there's no space for flowery prose with only 140 characters to express an idea. 

Read it here.  I generally agree with both these posts.  There is no doubt in my mind that blogging and Twitter have made me both a faster and more precise writer.

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on January 27, 2009 (boomark / email).