I’ve taught nature writing online, for community workshops or university seminars for 4 years now and, over that time, the ideas I share with participants have coalesced into some broad ideas, which I’m going to be posting about over the next few months.

The over-arching idea of my teaching is that you only get competent at something with what’s called ‘deliberative practice’. One definition of this is ‘a purposeful and systematic practice with focused attention, conducted with the specific goal of improving performance.’

Imagine you’ve decided to start learning to play a musical instrument. You find a teacher and begin lessons. Your teacher tells you that if you want to become a competent musician who can play in front of an audience, you will need to practise your instrument purposefully every day. Does that put you off? Probably not. While you might not manage absolutely every day, it seems to be accepted that becoming a musician will take regular commitment of time.

I’m not sure writing is seen like that… but it should be. When people tell me they want to be a nature writer, I often tell them that they need to find time to practise their nature writing every day, even for 5 minutes. That practising could involve reading other people’s nature writing with a critical eye, making writing research trips and maintaining a nature diary, as well as actually writing (about) nature.

This daily (at least) 5 minutes is important for 2 reasons. First, if you are to improve your writing to achieve publishable quality, like learning a musical instrument this will only come through deliberative practice. Second, it will reinforce in your own mind that you are a nature writer, for whom that investment of time is worthwhile.