Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
My advice would probably differ from most of the others here. I believe that your unique “voice” needs to find its own “truth” for you to be seen (or see yourself) as “a better writer”.
For some people this will be more direct and concise. For others this will be more “verbose” and “rambly” to use your words. There is nothing intrinsically wrong about long sentences. Charles Dickens often wrote long sentences. David Foster Wallace was seen by some as the greatest novelist of his generation and some of his sentences were pages long. The key thing that set both of them apart was they wrote what was absolutely true for them. Ernest Hemingway (who typically wrote in short, direct, pared back style) had some famous advice for writers: “Make every sentence the truth.”
That prompts a different question: “How do you know what’s true?”
My belief is that this is a matter of feel and intuition. Your mind might not always tell you what’s true. But your body will. Something somewhere in your body, some wave of small emotion, some inkling that might even express itself in the formation of a tear or two behind your eyes, will communicate itself when you find words that express a truth.
Also, this is not a 0 or 1. There are a million decimal points on the journey from falsehood to truth in your writing. The staircase stretches far far into the hazy distance and you can never see the top, you can just keep climbing.
Also, good luck.
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