This 5 Minute Writing Exercise Will Make You A Better Writer For The Rest Of Your Life

Or at least for the rest of your writing career

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

What qualifies me to teach?

I have very little formal education. I am primarily self-taught with many years of teaching experience.

I taught English, Essay Writing, and 7th-grade Math to adult GED students. I also taught Reading and Writing to English Second Language students. I taught Creative Writing in a men’s home. There, my students were serving out their jail sentence in a halfway house. These students were not in my class voluntarily. We still had a lot of fun, and I think they learned a bit.

“How to” not “what to”

I am still learning and honing my craft. I will never be done with that. Nor, I hope, will you be. I read all the how-to books, articles, and stories. I read online and offline. What I read has good content, but most of these articles tell us what to do rather than how to go about doing the thing. They tell you to write every day or to not write every day. They tell you to write a certain word count or to not write a word count. They tell you to write honestly, to make yourself vulnerable, to check your spelling and grammar, to write interesting stuff, and to give value to your readers. They give…