How To Play the Writing Game

I grew up passionate about sports, basketball in particular. I'd like to know how many hours I spent on my home court practicing my jump shot, just so when game time came I would have at least a faint chance of burying one.

When I began to take my writing seriously, I unconsciously adopted the same strategies, and to some extent they have worked for me. These include:

Practice: I took a hard look at my writing and had to admit that my skills were very unpolished, so I set about writing with the intention of developing my abilities. I challenged myself to write a story entirely in dialog. I took a playwriting course, not because I had that ambition, but because I thought here too I could learn to write crisp dialog. I wrote a couple of stories in stream of consciousness, to see how that might fit into my repertoire. I wrote 50 word stories and 300 word stories to practice economy of prose. 

Warmups: Rather than charge straight into my work in progress each day, I began to start by warming up. I kept, and still do, a daily diary about what I am working on. And since I write in a coffee house, I take advantage of this by beginning each session by picking out a customer and describing him or her. In this way I compiled a list of hundreds of character descriptions that I now turn to when in need of a character for my WIP.

Teamwork: I sought out other writers, both for the feedback I needed so badly, and for the encouragement that can be found in writing groups. I tried several groups, good people all, but settled on those whose members' abilities were better than mine, but not dramatically, so that I could learn from them while providing my own feedback that might be useful.

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For me, practicing my skills has made a great difference in my writing, and I can see gradual but consistent improvement over the years. In an ideal world, I would have been ready to write my magum opus without honing my skills first, but I don't live an ideal world. If I did, ice cream would have no calories.