Here’s a writing tip I’ve been nurturing for a while now: never, ever take your Writer Mittens off.
Of course you bring your A-Game with your stories and novels. Anyone with a blog or something similar will try to make the sentences coherent and representative of their skill. What I’ve been making an effort to do is apply my skills to comments and other “ephemeral” strings of words in this online world.
Unless you’ve fallen into some red-hot online tirade against the most witless of internet trolls (and I hope you’re better than that), take a moment to watch your sentence structure. Build the suspense of the comment. Rather than call the president “an idiot”, open your thesaurus and try “dribbling buffoon”.
This may be overly complicated if you’re posting using only your thumbs while hunkering in your cubicle so the boss doesn’t see you, but otherwise, I find it a fun little exercise to help keep the writing cardio in top form.
(Why don’t you try it right now? I’m always keen to read comments here.)
(But you can’t use “dribbling buffoon”. Dig deeper.)
