HOW TO BECOME A GOOD WRITER

Every profession or vocation has a learning process. In the words of a great author, Professor Chukwuemeka Ike, “writing is learning”. So if you must be a good writer, you must be an all-time learner. As a student, one should learn to do by doing! We should appreciate that being a student does not end at school. Learning to write well can be sourced from people's speeches, writings (such as books, newspapers, handbills, billboards etc) informal conversations, meetings and other activities in life.

It is saddening that somehow the age of information technology, that is the Internet and GSM, has dealt a serious blow on proper (formal) use of words in writing. The use of SMS is ubiquitousand so many people but few seem not interested in the actual writing anymore. This is a global phenomenon, anyway. The unequivocal truth is this: writers outlive their deaths. How? By their documentations.

To be a good writer, mastery of grammar is the key. Very importantly, the four major parts of speech—noun, verb, adjective and adverb—must be mastered. How to identify them in phrases, clauses and sentences is important. One should be aware how each of these can turn into one another as in ability (noun), enable (verb), able (adjective) and ably (adverb) etc. He should have knowledge of sentence structure—when a noun functions as subject, object or complement; when a verb has direct or indirect object (transitive and intransitive verbs) and when an adjective is a qualifier or used to complete a sentence. Special attention must also be paid to learning the use of preposition and conjunctions. Although the use of prepositions is the most controversial of all parts of speech, writers who know their onions apply them properly in their syntax.

With the appropriate use of punctuation marks, a writer can make their writings walk, dance, sleep and blink at will. Punctuation marks' usage can depict the speed of the event, smoothness or crookedness of an event being described as well as style of the writer.

Very crucial to good writing is the use of the dictionary. It is quite unfortunate that a host of students (and even their teachers these days) do not possess dictionaries. Simply put, a dictionary is an oracle consulted by the writer for accuracy of word usage. It will differentiate for you between seat and sit. It teaches you whether a word is of American or British spelling; capitalisation; synonyms; origin of words (Latin or Greek or Arabic, if loan words) and their pronunciations.

Sincerely speaking, writers have their optimum time to pen their work. And this time varies from writers. The best time for writer A is not the same with writer B. Since everyone has time for different activities, a writer should identify his best time to write. Whether early in the morning, in the daytime or in the middle of the night, the objective is the same: to write something worthy of being read. But more importantly, the best time to write is whenever the idea strikes. There and then, it is still hot; it is still original; it is still fresh. It may be on a journey, at home, in the car, in your bed, waking from your sleep, or during prayers! The sooner you pick up your pen and paper to jot down your ideas, the best to represent your thoughts on any subject. Do not allow it to melt away. Just like recording your dreams. The longer it takes the more you lose the concrete ideas in the dream.

Every writing has a style. It may be simple, technical, satirical or objective, detached, rib-cracking, entertaining, explosive and so forth. You should develop a style peculiar to you as this will stand you out from the crowd. Your writing style is like your personality in real life! Different authors, columnists and poets have different styles of writing. The way your mind communicates to you to write will naturally carve out a style in you. If you read different opinion writers in newspapers or website pages for example, you will observe their varied styles in word usage, presentation of ideas, idioms and collocation. It is instructive to say here that the best writing style to adopt is simplicity for easy understanding of one's audience. Whatever style of writing you adopt, your reader should discern with ease.

For example, in the following poetic lines, the reader easily understands the season and happening:

Rain, rain, rain
Water, water, water
Everywhere
We're drenched
By drops, drops
Water, water, water
Down, downpour
From the sky
Generally, good writers draw inspiration from other writers and that's why it is commonplace to see people quote verbatim what others have already documented in their writings.

· Idris Katib is Public relations Officer, Crescent University, Abeokuta and can be reached via [email protected]