Whether you’re a beginning writer, not even to the “beginning” point, or experienced, you can practice writing no matter where you are or what you’re doing.

Several examples:

• In church, critique and edit the bulletin. Look for misspellings, awkward sentences, and so on. Come up with ways to spice up the announcements! (please do not do this DURING church, but when you’re waiting for church to begin, or after church! )
• When you’re at a class or workshop, look for misspellings or awkward sentence structure in the handouts or Power Point presentations.
• Do the same when you’re reading the agenda for a meeting or notes of that meeting.
• Read small-town newspapers. I’m not trying to pick on small-town newspapers–they’re usually so much more interesting than big-town papers. And . . . they usually don’t have professional proofreaders or editors on staff. The un-proofread, un-edited articles that sometimes make it into the paper can be confusing, unclear, unorganized . . . and quite entertaining to the writers and aspiring writers reading them.
• Read editorials and personal columns in newspapers and newsletters. Critique them, also. Many times the point these columns or letters are trying to make is not clear; re-write the letter or column, or write a column or letter expressing YOUR point of view. (This weekend a friend and I were talking about a column that a lady in our area writes for the paper.   As well as sounding very negative, the lady s columns include sentence fragments, unorganized thoughts, and abrupt endings. She said that one year as an english project, her daughter’s class corrected the grammar, etc. in these articles . . . and sent them to the writer!)

This week, practice editing a church bulletin, company newsletter, or poorly-written column or editorial.