The ability to write efficiently and persuasively is important in many areas of life, and especially for spreading rationalist memes and hence raising the sanity waterline.
While there are a lot of very good and persuasive writers of both fiction and non-fiction on Less Wrong there seems to be relatively little advice on how to improve one's writing skills.
While there are a huge number of writing guides available, much like general self help they rarely reference studies on the effectiveness of the advice contained, and while some come from very successful authors, the problems of generalising from one example are well known.
Given this, would people be willing to supply rationalist supported strategies for improving writing skills?
Notes,
I've looked for previous posts on this subject, but if I have missed a previous good discussion please link to it and I will close this thread.
The most obvious piece of advice would be to engage in large amounts of writing practice, but hopefully you will be able to supply some more strategic advice than that.
Edit,
Consensus so far is that a high level of practice is very important, ideally paired with useful and continuous feedback. Otherwise a general agreement that the process is very idiosyncratic, with a few good suggestions for resources that have worked for individuals.
Ideally we'd be looking for advice that has helped a large majority of people to have tried it, if any such exists.
(Also added links)
That's actually in incredibly good, rational method for learning to write. It allows the writer to study an existing model, practice, then compare against the model afterwards. One could do this with pretty much any author, journal, or paper that you enjoy, and it should be effective no matter the type of writing. Now that I think about it, I'm going to suggest it to some friends of mine who teach English classes in the area. Thanks!