Would you like a few tips on recycling a piece of failed poetry or prose? How about some quick and dirty tips for writing stronger dialogue? Some ideas to thwart writer's block. Or to jumpstart your writing, despite yourself?I found a wonderful site with 31 free-for-the-asking "workshops" to help
you improve your writing at Mslexia, a writing magazine published in the U.K. that offers lots of online resources and links for writers.Each workshop is about a page long but filled with fresh tips and suggestions for polishing your prose.
Though Mslexia is a magazine for and by women writers, the writing workshops will help anyone, regardless of gender, desiring to improve as a writer. Here's a sample from the introduction to the workshop on writing in the first person:
"Did you realise that you can write in first person, without writing about yourself? This may sound obvious, but to many writers it’s a new and startling idea. Using a first person viewpoint is not a promise to write faithfully about your own life and times. It is just a way of structuring your narrative.
Writing in first person is an excellent way to begin building character. The ‘I’ viewpoint encourages intimacy and so can cushion the transition into character. It is also (usually) the most comfortable and accessible viewpoint for the new writer..."
After introducing each workshop, the workshop leader, writer Margaret Wilkinson (a lecturer for the Creative Writing MA at Northumbria University and a prose writer for radio, screen and stage) provides a few really good guided exercises.
While reviewing the workshops for this post, I learned about thirty good...no...GREAT tips.
If you are at all serious about becoming a better writer, shoot on over to the workshops at Mslexia. You have nothing to lose but your writer's block and bad habits.
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