Writing Seasons Part 3: Season of Craft
A season when we "sit up straight in writing school" and pour into the art of language. Which season are you in?
⚪️ Part 1 — Season of Musing
⚪️ Part 2 — Season of Tending
🟢 Part 3 — Season of Craft
⚪️ Part 4 — Season of Rest
Welcome to the third part of Writing Seasons. If Tending is about creating connection, Craft is about integrity.
It’s the time when we commit to shaping our writing into something strong and clear — not because we must “prove” ourselves, but because we care. Craft doesn’t mean perfectionism. It means offering our readers the most fully-realized version of our voice.
Elevate and refine your writing!
In organizing these Writing Seasons, I’ve reflected a lot on whether or not writers have a propensity to get “stuck” in a season when they ought to move on. For someone who has a journalism degree and feels quite at home in the production side of writing, I think it’s possible that I stayed closer to the Season of Craft for longer than necessary. (Likely because it’s the season where things made the most sense!) As a career writer and editor, I definitely have to be mindful that my good intentions of “honing my craft” don’t turn into a bunch of false purity tests — where I focus so much on polishing and tweaking and obsessing over commas that I forget that readers are here for an experience, not to make red-line marks on my writing.
A productive Season of Craft is one where we sit up straight in Writing School and get serious about the integrity of our writing. It’s not the season for prolonged arguments about the merits of the Oxford comma because the comma, ultimately, isn’t what makes or breaks a great piece of writing for readers.
How you hone, edit and polish your work matters. Plopping your writing down with a banal introduction followed by incomplete thoughts is fine when you’re in a Season of Musing. But the Season of Craft is a call to lift your writing up to a higher standard.
After reading and editing hundreds of people’s writing, there’s a certain ear I’m trained with: to consider audience attention spans and the beauty of sentence structure. And I know when writers lose people in their writing. If you’re ready to get serious about your writing, here are some of the most common places that writing needs the attention of a Season of Craft:
Improve your relationship with adjectives (use them less)
Practice showing what happened in a story, not telling about it like you’re talking to a brick wall
Bring in the elements of sensory awareness (tell us how things taste, smell, look, sound and feel)
Get relentless about your first sentence having a hook and then the first paragraph working like an engine revving
Set your writing in something relatable and then weave in your personal experiences/reflections
Take the seemingly relatable or predictable and work to make them surprising
Learn how to work with complex pieces of research
Improve how you interview subject matter experts so you don’t guide them toward an answer you’re looking for
Format your work for tired, online eyes and take into account how digital reading taxes us all
Craft is where your ideas begin to sing — but even the most polished voice needs silence. As we wrap up this season, the next may feel surprising: we enter the Season of Rest. It’s the most overlooked — and most radical — phase of the writing cycle. One where we do not produce, but become.
Refining your voice? Seeking clarity in the process?
The Season of Craft can be energizing — and intense. If you’re feeling the weight of precision or the stretch of growth, I want to invite you to a free community Zoom call next week. We’ll explore the seasons together and talk about the kinds of resources that help navigate each one.
Registration is free and we’d love to see you there.
Yes to all your points, especially the one about the first sentence. I work hard for one that sets up a conflict and propels the story.
Such helpful concrete practices! Thank you, Amanda!