I love writing. I love learning about writing. Playing with words and finding creative ways to craft sentences and paragraphs is a joy for me. Though I’ve had my fair share of compliments about my ‘way with words’ over the years, I never stop looking for ways to improve my writing.

The most significant book I’ve read that’s helped me with this is On Writing Well by William Zinsser. I try to read read it – or at least revisit my notes on it – every year.

Stephen King’s On Writing is a good read too.

And though Philip Pullman’s Daemon Voices focusses on storytelling, I learnt lots about writing from his collection of essays.

All three I can recommend for reflecting on your writing and finding ways to improve it.

More recently, I loved an essay by Ahmed Soliman ruminating on how he taught himself to write via The Economist. He shares six tools he learnt. All helpful.

Though we may not all think of ourselves as writers, we are. We might not all write books or articles, but any of us who are knowledge workers spend half our days writing. Emails. Slack messages. Teams posts. Social media updates.

And, believe me, good writing makes a difference.

It’s something we’d all benefit from investing in; thinking about how we write; exploring ways to become better writers.

Everyone we interact with via the written word will be grateful.

Do you have any books, articles, or podcasts that have helped you improve your writing?  Do you share my view that improving our writing skills is valuable for all of us? I'd love to hear from you – just hit reply or drop me a note.

–Sam