The embarrassingly easy change that made me a better writer

Should've done it earlier.

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In the last couple of months I’ve been writing here about the various chapters of my book. Now I come to chapter eight, which has led me to an embarrassing realisation.

The chapter is called ‘How do writers learn?’. It draws on conversations I’ve had with authors, screenwriters, poets and journalists about how they’ve improved their work over time – whether that’s involved a good editor, a course, a writers’ group or a particular kind of practice.

It occurred to me recently that (in my opinion, anyway) my writing has improved in the last six years. That’s nice and everything, but it’s worth mentioning that in 2019, I was already about eleven years into writing professionally – so it’s a bit dismaying to wonder what I was doing over that first decade or so.

I can tell I’ve got better since then, because when I read my own or other people’s work, I can see problems in it that would have been, or were, invisible to me previously. That’s the best way I can find to describe how it feels: as though my vision has improved – like when you zoom in on a map online, and a flurry of new street names and details appears. I’ve become more aware, more critical and more discerning (there is, of course, still loads of room for improvement).

Today I want to share a big factor in that progress, but I’m also slightly mortified to publicise it.

In the first eleven years of my writing career… I wasn’t reading a lot of books.

me having this realisation