Wriging

You're in trouble now hthth.

Your writing links are great, especially the Vonnegut thing.
If I think about the "accidental and intentional, elements of style"
and what I read online it sort of makes sense. I find that what I end up reading are blog by people who have this more than any other thing, their writing would be identifiable to me even if their name was absent.

I have serious problems with stripping something to bare bones but have gotten much better on "having the guts to cut".

I think if you just read a lot, whether it be blogs, books, newspapers, etc... Your writing skills will get better without you knowing.

I'm sure it does, especially if you take care in analyzing what you're reading. But that could be tedious, so I'd rather familiarize myself with basic, effective practices of writing before beforehand to know what I'm looking for/speed up the process.

The two best ways to improve your writing are:

• Reading
• Writing

Simple, really. Read as much as possible, write as much as possible. Techniques and tips are all useless if you don't have, at the very least, a basic understanding of the English language. Read things you wouldn't normally read, see how different authors have different styles, how they construct a sentence. Read a book by William Burroughs, then read a book by Truman Capote. Books you wouldn't normally read.

Take it all in. Start writing. Doesn't matter what. Borrow sentence constructs from other authors, see how they work for you. Why do they work? Etc., etc.

Reading and writing is all I ever did, and I like to think I can write fairly well. Granted, I'm unlikely to ever write a novel, but I can hold a person's attention when I need to.

Thanks Rich — that's reassuring. Reading books that you wouldn't normally read is a great idea I hadn't considered.

English isn't my first language, and when I write I do so by feeling — without explicit structure rules and knowledge. Those feelings are sometimes wrong, which I aim to fix. I see guidelines as a shortcut for the experimentation, e.g. learning classic tricks and structure without having to read through tons of text and identify them myself.

But like you say, reading and writing is definitely the ultimate requirement.