Most people can write a whole lot better than they already are and I’m not just talking about incremental improvements here; I’m saying a whole lot better, and I do mean those precise words. If you start writing on a topic that you know is a winner, and if you feel you have a firm grasp of your audience and what they like, you’ll normally end up with an article that is more than just decent. It’ll end up being pretty good, if I’m being honest. But why settle for pretty good, why not aim for excellence? Just taking a look at the finer nuances of your writing style means that you will be able to tweak things to go from good to great with ease. Here’s some principles to do just that.

Go crazy, edit later

Okay, so this is a bit sensationalist as advice goes, I must admit. You don’t literally need to go apeshit while writing a post, an article, a letter or just about anything else you can think of. What I do mean is that you need to simply cut loose and write whatever it is that you like writing about in your own, distinctive style. As my good friend Mr. Hemingway once said (okay, you got me; he isn’t really my friend), be real; it is the best way to produce compelling prose or copy that reels people in. Trust and persuasion is vital for the written word, so don’t ever write like some robot spitting out text heartlessly. Don’t write, tell; your copy needs life.

Patience is a virtue

Being patient is a very vital virtue when it comes to writing well. Sometimes, you just have to write whatever it is you want to and then walk away from it in order to gain some perspective. Anything looks better in hindsight (especially beautiful women walking away, but that’s not the point), so let that text simmer overnight instead of being in a tearing hurry to just get it done rapidly. Okay, so you have to be in a hurry at some times, but don’t get so excited about whatever it is you’re writing that you end up losing perspective. You don’t need to send it out straight away; give it some time and take a second look at it. You’d be surprised by how much you missed first time out.

Get a little help from your friends

If you’ve followed the previous piece of advice I mentioned in this post, read it out aloud. Not you, silly; get a friend to do it for you. This way you can pick up on little errors that you might have missed earlier. Problems with flow and continuity that just skipped by you earlier become clear as day all of a sudden. I’ll be honest; I rarely every do this myself and everyone says it’s the way to go and I do agree with the idea behind it all even if I rarely ever get around to doing it myself.

Surely you’ve heard of Twitter, the micro-blogging service that allows you to say something 140 characters at a time, and surely you’ve joined up by now. If you haven’t done so as yet, don’t wait for an invitation; sign up right away. Twitter is a great way for businesses and marketers to reach out to consumers and in the case of bloggers their readers, but it’s also a terrific way to flex your writing muscles and spruce up your writing skills.

No, you did not misread that at all. Yes, I do mean it. Twitter can help you become a much better writer than you are, and I’ll tell you exactly how it does that.

Twitter makes conciseness really matter

If you have used Twitter, you will have doubtlessly noticed that you have just 140 characters to say whatever it is you have to. Not 140 words, 140 characters. There’s no more room for rambling diatribes and pointless foreshadowing in your prose. You don’t have the luxury of space to work with, brevity is where it’s at. Letters, symbols, punctuations, spaces…they all count as characters and force you to alter the way you write. Twitter is, in its own way, a very pure form of writing. You need to know exactly what it is that you want to say and you have say it without wasting an extra word or character unless you can help it. Many writers (including your truly) love to write long winding, overly wordy messages and it is impossible to be wordy and pack it into 140 characters. Again, how do you go about chopping that message down to size? We thought you’d never ask.

Expand your vocabulary just for Twitter

All that you have at your disposal are 140 characters, so you best make sure that you make full use of it. Blow the dust off of that thesaurus and dictionary and start to look up words that you can use, words that aren’t quite as complex as supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. The key is to use shorter words, words that are more descriptive than those you might have other used and words that will help you fully utilize those 140 characters while at the same time getting your message across.

Pick those adverbs and adjectives by the scruff of the neck and replace them verbs. In the process, you will discover better clarity when trying to get your point across to a discerning audience. Now if you’re a newbie to the site, you’ll notice the character counter at the bottom and most people will hit somewhere around 145-160 characters to begin with. And so you need to chop back on some words and make things more concise. And this is also how Twitter helps you become a better writer.

Twitter brushes up your editing skills

Every writer has to have the ability to proofread and edit his own work and Twitter helps you constantly sharpen this one skill and keep your editing skills always running at full tilt. It’s like a little mini game; the clock is ticking down on that 140 character limit and you have to get a message across, make followers click on a link, retweet, reply or take action. And you have to get it all done with 140 characters. It’s a mind game like no other, forcing you to dig deep to come up with the perfect message. That should give you enough reason to use Twitter, but did you really need one?

The best advice I ever got on how to blog could be summed up in two simple words; be interesting. It’s alright as advice, but nothing that’s groundbreaking. I mean, everybody knows that they have to be interesting to be able to get repeat visitors back to the blog. But seriously, how many go about actually doing something about it. Besides, how do you go about being interesting?

Everyone talks about differentiating yourself and the value it holds for you, but it is very hard to capture their value in a nutshell and say “here, this is what you need to capture best”. Nor can I take your hand, open the palm and say “here’s your differentiation, now go and make something of it”. Because of this inherent intangibility, it’s very hard to discover exactly what someone means when they goad you to be more interesting. Here’s some ways to be interesting, at least to some people.

Be contrarian

Everyone’s trying to be right or honest or correct in some way or the other. Why go with the madding crowd when you can swim against the stream and make a lot more traffic hit your blog? Commonality is a boring thing, the wrong thing. Take a surprising stance, be a bit outlandish just be contrary to popular logic and people will stop and smell the roses.

Inject a bit of humor into it

Bloggers are a very serious breed, maybe too serious for my liking. It’s like we’re on this mission to teach the world something, and somewhere along the way we forgot exactly how to go about enjoying ourselves and entertaining people. It’s no good being a blogger if you end up putting your readers to sleep! So how do you break the reverie? Inject a bit of humor, that’s how. The best of orators use a bit of always, some more effectively than others. Just remember to be appropriate.

Irreverence is good

Stir the pot a bit, or shake the honeycomb if that’s a metaphor that more suits your tastes. Make fun of the things most people wouldn’t touch with a twenty foot barge pole. South Park is shockingly gross at times, but it is their irreverence that has won them so many fans. Laugh at religion, politics, diseases, anything that people hold dear. Yes, it will offend some but some people love it, and Maddox is a classic example of this.

Have a good story to tell

People just don’t get this one somehow. Stories support your arguments and whatever point it is that you have to make and make for a terrific opening line or paragraph, and it does all of this while entertaining readers. Forget the little anecdotes floating around the internet, everyone has those. What you have is a story to tell, so allow it to unfurl.

Craft it with love

Everyone cranks out blog posts the way China spits out cheap goods or the way Britney Spears used to create babies (but she has since stopped being a baby factory, to her credit). Honestly, do you want to craft a blog that is mechanical and absolutely devoid of any passion or love? I know I wouldn’t, some of those articles are just words regurgitated on a page (yes, I’m guilty of having done that when I’m busy or tired). Pour some effort into that blog and you’ll be surprised by how much more memorable and interesting it becomes.

Everyone said that tablet PC’s need something new, something to reinvigorate the platform. After years of products that tried to make the seemingly doomed form factor work, Apple came up with the iPad and the adoring masses loved it. Love it or loathe it, the iPad is most definitely here to stay and it’s powering a sea change in the world of mobile computing. Just as the iPhone was the phone every phone tried to be, the iPad is the tablet PC that every device is trying to be *cough* Samsung Galaxy Tab *cough* but it’s not the hardware that makes the iPad so special, it’s the user experience and the slick way in which it integrates with the hardware. It is this integration that applications are now looking to harness, and there are even some great apps for when you hit writers block. Load up these apps on that iPad.

Web Roulette

It’s like Russian Roulette minus a gun, and you’ve just got to spin the wheel (no, seriously) to get a random site across a number of categories (such as humor, tech, comics, opinion, science and so on). Web Roulette is a great way to snap that writers block of yours and get out of the rut you might find yourself in.

23,000 Great Quotes HD

“I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it.” – Groucho Marx.

Has it ever happened with you that you read a great sentence or quote and find your creative spark just brought to life? That does happen to me a fair bit, and you most likely won’t browse through all 23,000 of these quotes, but it doesn’t hurt spending at least a few minutes reading through them.

Popplet

The name is absurd, the app itself is not. Sometimes all you need is someone to get in touch with someone who gets that inspiration flowing, opens up the floodgates as it were. Popplet is great for some idea generation, and it’s a brainstorming app that allows you to explore ideas and get inspired.

MovieVault

Sometimes, being inspired means simply taking a break from everything, just escaping from it all. That’s where this app and your iPad comes into the picture. MovieVault connects you to an archive of movies that you can watch. All you have to pay is the price of the app and you have access to a list of great movies to watch. Run away to a great story, and you can then pen your own stories with your creative spark plugs cleaned.

Zinio

Several traditional print magazines have gone digital and your iPad is a fantastic platform on which to view them. This app itself is free and it’s more of a digital newsstand for you to use with you paying for the publications themselves. Explore, dive in and get inspired.