That was very, very skillful.  

Q:  So today’s question comes from a far away distant land.  It’s from Dubai, I’ve

been to Dubai.  I really like Dubai.  I had a really good time in Dubai.  We’ll

tell you as a little side story.  I was so nervous that I wasn’t going to wear enough

clothes.  I actually went out and bought a lot of clothes to cover my body and then

I went out to dinner one night, and this chick had on hot pants.  I was like, “What’s

going on?”   

Anyway, back to today’s question.  It’s from Dr. Nazarene and she writes:

“Greetings from Dubai!  If there was one tip that you could give me to improve my writing

besides practicing, what would you suggest?  Smooches! 

  A:  Dr. Nazarene, I love that she wrote smooches,

thank you so much!  Smooches, right back to you.  So I never can give just one tip

because I’m the kind of girl likes to give a lot of tips.  I just like to talk to a

lot if you haven’t figured that out yet.  But I have two tips for you today and the

first one is one that has improved my writing dramatically and I love when I do this. 

Josh gets very happy when I do this and it’s all about reading fiction, right.

  Most of us especially for in any kind of like

academic setting or we’re very driven and we always wanted to do self-improvement stuff. 

We kind of forget about the whole world of fiction and when you read fiction, it improves

your writing dramatically.  Why?  Because fiction’s all about story telling and the

best writing of every type tells stories.  It’s how we humans learn best.  We love

get hooked into a really good story and just, we just love it!

  You probably can’t hear that but I got a

little distracted because of Poncho, the dog.  Poncho, do you want to come over here?  Hi! 

You want to say hi to everybody?  Poncho!  Hi, Poncho!  Hi cutie!  So you could see

why I got distracted because he’s really sweet and he’s kind of like me.  Yeah.

  Okay so, back to fiction.  So last summer

it was really funny, Josh was telling me about… He’s like, “ You know you read so much

as far as business development, self-development.”  He’s like, “You just need to get a good

fiction novel,” and I said, “You know what, you’re right.”  So I pulled down

my Kindle and I was just looking around, there’s samples on Kindle.  I wasn’t really paying

attention to what I hit the sample of and it was called Knight of Pleasure. 

  I didn’t realize that I got myself hooked

into some kind of trashy erotica.  It was awesome!  It was so freaking good!  I tell

you, I was like, “Woo!  Should I be reading this?”  Like it was just amazing!  And

then that same summer, I got myself hooked into the whole Twilight series, and I don’t

care if you think it’s cheesy.  I absolutely loved it!  I watched the movies and I read,

then I watched the movies, then I read.  But I’ll tell you, it absolutely improved

my writing ability.  

It’s just new words were coming into my vocabulary and I just started making pictures

in my mind, and I found out that it absolutely translated to everything that I write.  Now

the second tip and this is one that requires a little bit of courage.  What I would suggest

if you’re really committed to improving your writing is to gather some of your friends

together, friends that are smart and ideally are writers as well, and have a little bit

of a writing feedback party.  

Now, the way I would do this is I would send out my friends’ pieces of my writing beforehand. 

So send them some articles, you know maybe a half a chapter of a book depends on what

you’re working on and have them really give you their honest feedback.  Tell them to

be compassionate.  You got to be gentle but you do want the truth.  Find out where they’re

getting lost.  Find out if they just feel like your sentences are, you know just a little

bit awkward.   

Maybe you’re not being very clear in how you describe things.  And, if you don’t

have friends that you can do this with, I would highly recommend you hire someone to

give you feedback.  I’ve gotten feedback on my copy, best thing in the world!  People

point out, you know what I got lost here, this headline isn’t working.  It’s fantastic! 

So those are two really good tips to improve your writing that have got nothing to do with

practice.  Wasn’t that good?  I thought it was good.  Smooches back to you!

  Okay so, hopefully that was useful.  I found

it entertaining.  The dog was certainly entertaining.  If you like this video, like it.  Leave a

comment.  If you’d like more, you could check out what we got going on on the rest

of the channel somewhere or come and see me at marieforleo.com for more good stuff. 

Thanks again and I’ll catch you next time!