Sometimes you’re so enmeshed in your writing, you can’t tell if you’ve improved, gotten worse, or are treading water! Here’s a list of qualities of excellent writers, to help you measure your writing progress and objectively and honestly assess your writing progress. 

First, a quip for writers from Doris Lessing: 

“Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment, learn inner independence, learn to trust that time will sort the good from the bad - including your own bad.” 

With time, you’ll get better at distinguishing between good and bad writing. It’s easier to judge other people’s bad writing (just like it’s easier to spend other people’s money!), but you’ll become skilled at recognizing not only your own poor writing, but how you’ve improved over time. 

How to Tell if Your Writing is Improving

This list is from A Writer’s Book of Days: A Spirited Companion & Lively Muse for the Writing Life by Judy Reeves (her list was called “How Can I Tell If My Writing is Improving?”; this list is a slightly modified version). It’s a fabulous book about writing, and offers everything from inspirational writing quotations to writing prompts.

Your writing is improving if…

• Your verbs are lively and diverse.
• You stay with one topic long enough to explore it, rather than verging off into digressions that go nowhere or jumping from one thought to the next. You are a more patient writer.
• Your sentences vary in length and structure.
• You’ve eliminated generalities; you write in specifics (writing in specifics is one way I know my writing is improving. For instance, yesterday in an MSN Health article about food and appearance, I deleted the word food and inserted “apples, avocados, and almond milk”).
• You don’t overwrite, nor are you stingy with words.
• You write more naturally, with less self-consciousness (this is a great writing tip).
• You easily fall into writing about the topic and begin writing without hesitation; you don’t stop to think or consider, you just keep the pen moving (but, I think I’m improving as a writer and yet I often stop to think about what I’m writing).
• Instead of putting a period at the end of a sentence, you put a comma and take the thought further (caveat: run-on sentences aren’t a quality of an excellent writer!).
• You write in the active voice (another great writing tip, which I’m sure you’ve heard before).
• You save the strongest word for the last in the sentence (can someone explain this to me? I’m not sure I understand how this makes you an improved writer).
• You take more risks.
• You include “delicious” details.
• You don’t rush through to get to the end, but take your time, lingering and savoring. Letting the tension build. (but, don’t let your writing drag on and on….wordiness definitely means your writing isn’t improving).
• You’re willing to experiment, to try out, to go to unknown places in your writing (similar to taking writing risks). 

Reeves ends her list - “How Can I Tell If My Writing is Improving?” - in A Writer’s Book of Days with this: “As for that idea that ‘practice makes perfect,’ it’s a lie. There is no perfect, only better and sometimes very, very good.” 

Fellow scribes, strive not to be perfect, not to be a bestselling author, and not to be a famous poet. Strive to be very, very good…and you’ll get better and better as a writer.