As you will probably have noticed before the end of this question, I’m a relatively mediocre writer. I mean, I’m not that bad, I know a lot of people who are worse at it than I am, but I still often notice a pattern in basically everything I write: exceedingly long and complex sentences, giving masses of detail with little apparent regard for how much information the person at the other end actually needs, "stick-on" weird metaphors which appear randomly every time I’m afraid I’m being too technical or annoying (so you get a wall of annoying text with a bit of canned laughter in the middle…), vague sentences that go around for a while as I’m slowly figuring out what I mean to say, long paragraphs, etc. Also, I spend ages proofreading anything I write and worrying about it…
Anyway, I’d like to get better at it. And LW is full of good writers, so surely someone will have advice?
I know the standard piece of advice is "write more stuff", or maybe "read The Sense of Style, or something". And I’ve done both these things, and they’ve helped, but I’m still a pretty mediocre writer. I’m still writing somewhat more than the average person, but if I want to go beyond that and practice even more, it will have to mean a deliberate effort to improve my writing. And if I decide to deliberately improve my writing using advice that’s not more specific than "write more stuff, and then some more again", my efforts will soon fall into that deep endless cave where people drop their New Year resolutions every 15th January…
So, any ideas?
Who do you recommend asking to be a reader?
I have a extremely difficult time finding friends to earnestly read my material. The amount of times I've sent a PDF and heard... nothing. I guess it is at least partly because of your second suggestion - I write about topics that interest me but probably aren't that important to anyone that isn't me. I don't know anyone who has any interest in the use of Pantomime in Cinema.
That means finding people to read and critique my writing is already an uphill battle, because unless I'm a "good writer" already how can I possibly convince them that this topic is interesting or important?