Bad habits are hard to break. On dog walks, my two-year-old English Cocker Spaniel continues to jump on humans and their canine companions. Meanwhile, my five-year-old Aussie-Shepherd-Husky insists on introducing himself to new pups in the most intimate of ways. Both despite all my efforts and a few protests from other dogs. I tell people I have a jumper and a humper.
Then, of course, there’s the chipmunk hunting, which the older Aussie mix, Misha, has taught the young Cocker, Moke, to do. I try to remind Moke that he’s a bird dog. His answer, it would seem, is that he’s an equal-opportunity kind of guy.
Yes, habits are often so entrenched that they become unyielding. But as my pups’ chipmunk hunting shows, habits can also be learned. The challenge is to learn the good ones and unlearn the others. This is especially true when it comes to writing. Luckily, a few tactics, especially when deployed with the right resources, can help on that front.
As you probably know if you know me at all, I always recommend a sloppy-copy first draft, since being critical of one’s early content is a sure way of stymying the originality and vulnerability that make a book great. Once you’ve hammered out your initial draft, however, it’s time to revise it. A lot. You’ll want to scrutinize everything from whether it works structurally to your prose.
On the language front, running a Grammarly spelling-and-grammar check—which will catch a ton more than Word’s spell-and-grammar checker—can help you sniff out many of your bad writing habits. Not only will it identify grammatical and spelling mistakes, it will point to incorrect word choices, passive or clunky sentence construction, and tone issues, and offer suggestions.
I’ll warn you in advance, Grammarly is a time-consuming pain, especially because there’s no way to “Ignore All” or “Correct All.” While that can be super frustrating, the act of having to fix the same mistake time after time after time is excellent reinforcement. There’s no better way to dump bad writing habits than being repeatedly confronted with same writing mistakes—and having to revise them—during a concentrated period.
If you want to really immerse yourself in reversing your bad writing habits, you could follow up with a WritingProAid check since the two apps tend to catch different things. While this could be overkill, at least you’ll then be able to decide for yourself which app you like better (or hate less).
Whether you use one or both, just remember that these AI-powered apps don’t always get things right. So, evaluate every change being suggested to make sure it makes sense and actually improves your copy.
Eventually, if you pay close attention each and every time to what you originally wrote and the revision, you will break those bad writing habits, no matter how long you’ve been practicing them.
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