How to write with more consistent quality?

[ueonts]

Do you guys have any tips for writing more consistently? I don't mean consistent as in how much you write, I mean quality. It seems that my skill and creativity can often fluctuate depending on my mood and general luck. How can I even it out and write at a more consistent quality level?

[vapidink]

Just focus on getting the story down. First drafts are meant to be bad, quality control comes in during editing and rewrites. If you get too hung up on making everything perfect the first time it'll be harder to finish the story.

[BoomerZ]

When you are starting out, quantity has a quality all it's own. You need experience. LOTS of it. You need to write. Do small edits and move on to the next story. Short stories. Stuff you can finish in days, not weeks or years. You have time to do your great novel. But you need to work through many stories before you know the craft. This is why in art such as life drawing (nude figure drawing for anatomy studies) you do 2-5 minute gestures. It's about doing lots of drawings, not doing the perfect drawing. With any practice comes skill. With that skill, your level of ability will flatten out and be more consistent.

[IndomitableX]

Writing with consistent quality require the act of being conscious of it when writing.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Seems natural that sometimes we're be more eloquent or inventive in dialog, etc., that we are at other times. Like, everyone has "off" days & other days when you amaze yourself.

So, I think a key to keeping consistent is to write ahead of any deadlines so you have time to put new stuff away for a bit & then later read your older & newer material together. Then, I think, you can see where you weren't firing on all cylinders & do some editing so that you like it better.

[TheLemmaLlama]

It seems that my skill and creativity can often fluctuate depending on my mood and general luck.

This is inevitable, afaik. However, if you just want the finished piece to be of consistent quality, then you can just spend more time on the parts of lower quality to bring them up to snuff.

Quality isn't just a function of how inspired/'switched on' you were when you write the thing, it also correlates to how much effort you put into the thing, how long you spend working on it, etc :]

[ueonts]

How short is too short?

[BoomerZ]

Something you can finish in no more than a week. And write about different things, stuff you wouldn't write about normally. This gives your practice on multiple types of scenes and genre.