1. Storytelling
All writing is the telling of a story. Some stories are boring. Some writers are good enough to make even the boring stories interesting. Find the story in what you are writing and bring it to life. A story can be simple, deceptively simple: a student graduates; a couple divorces; a teenager wrecks a car, or wins a scholarship, or both; a writer publishes a book; a man wins the lottery; another man loses his job.

2. Working with ideas
Ideas are flighty things. You get a glimpse of one, you sit down to capture it on paper, and it flits away. Writing is the art of learning to how to handle ideas, how to weigh them and assign a value, how to hold on to some and discard others.

A few thoughts about ideas:

• not all ideas are worth your time
• not all ideas have to be made into book-length pieces
• ideas need to be coaxed sometimes, given room to develop in the brain.
• ideas of today are the fodder of all your future writing. Grab the ideas, write them down, however barebones they appear. This is why writers keep journals or notebooks.

3. Handling information
Information – research, facts, interviews, statistics, details, evidence, background, history, dialogue, speech patterns, place, personality – can either bring your story to life or drag it down to the dead places where no reader wants to follow. Gathering information is half the work; sifting through it is the other half; incorporating it into your story is the other half. Yup, three halves. Editing is the fourth half.

4.  Balancing sides
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” You’ve heard that before. You need to apply it to your writing. People react to what you have written. You need to grab an awareness of the potential reactions. No, you don’t need to argue the opposing side, but you need to be ready to answer them. In nonfiction writing, this comes out to credibility; in fiction writing, it means plausability or believability. Ignore the reaction, and you will produce something incomplete.
5. Understanding words and grammar
Words are the tools of the writers. Grammar is the method of putting words together. If you’re not familiar with both, familiar the way a dentist is familiar with teeth, then you will struggle as a writer, period. You will struggle to express your ideas and stories accurately; you will struggle to handle the flood of information; and you will struggle to find people who will take you seriously. Prove yourself by professionalism. Words/grammar are your tools.

“We must make choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.” – Thomas Merton