[DoreenMichele]

Some writers find "beta readers" to give them feedback. (Think of how often Paul Graham's essays thank multiple people by name "for reading drafts of this.")

Forum comments on the topic can help you learn how to talk about a particular topic. Like I sometimes talk or write about housing issues and "affordable housing" is a buzz word that means a particular thing to a lot of people and what they hear is not what I am trying to say. So I went looking for other phrases and began thinking about what I want people to hear and began just avoiding that term most of the time.

Writing for pay can be an enormous growth experience that can help discipline you to focus more on what other people want or what the parameters need to be and get out of that mindset of just kind of talking to yourself, only in writing.

It can help to start blurbs and to work on it over time. If you put it away and read it again at a later date and stop and go "Wait a minute. I just interpreted that sentence as X and I know I really meant to convey Y." then you think about "How do I really say Y?"

It can help to find online tools of various sorts that give you feedback on your writing, like: http://www.hemingwayapp.com/