People have always promoted the importance of reading poetry because of the benefits it brings to the reader. Not for merely practical reasons, but also for artistic and taste-driven reasons.

Perhaps some of you have never experienced the feelings that come with great poetry. There are so many great poems for  every emotion and occasion: love poems, short poems, friendship poetry, and even shoe poems.

In this article, we’ll be exploring the world of poetry and its many benefits to readers of all ages and backgrounds. These are just 5 of the many benefits that come with reading poetry.

1. Develop your creativity

Poetry has been scientifically proven to help develop people’s creativity. This is one of the main reasons why it is commonly recommended to read poems to young children. It’s one of the most popular things for parents and teachers to do with young children along with singing songs.

Creativity is fundamental to many aspects of our lives, both personally and professionally. On a personal level, it helps us reflect on our lives, family, and emotions. In many cases, creativity can help give life purpose and meaning. At a work level, great work tends to come from creative thinking. Thinking outside the box can lead to huge boosts in productivity, efficiency, and business outcomes. Extremely creative poems tend to show up on reading apps and writing sites that allow for user generated content. Because anybody can post, people post very creative and unique poems for all to read.

2. Self Expression

Reading poetry regularly can also improve one’s self-expression and communication skills. Especially if you’re reading poetry out loud, the language, flow, and natural gestures that come with poetry can do wonders for one’s communication skills. It’s actually hard to measure the intangible benefits that come from the communication side of things because we communicate so much as humans.

Reading poetry aloud can also increase confidence in public speaking, one of people’s biggest fears. This is because the pronunciation and the fear of not sounding eloquent is a big factor that contributes to the fear of public speaking. Poetry helps solve that.

3. Improve Memory

Memory is one of the great benefits of reading poetry. In these times we make use of the Internet to find any data, any news or any name when we do not remember it. Not bad, but poetry will help you to be a dictionary yourself and will help you to stimulate your own memory beyond that of the browser.

Poetry is built on rhymes, rhythm, and flow. Reading poetry will be useful for you to recognize certain patterns or repetitive social protocols during your daily life. Because of these poetic elements, it is actually quite a bit easier to remember poems than anything else, making it great for memory tricks. The best way to illustrate this is with songs. You probably remember song lyrics better than high school math class. That’s because of the meaning and rhythm that makes memorization easier.

4. Develop your Values

On a site like Commaful’s poetry section, for example, you will see hundreds of examples of poems with a critical view of the world. These poems give you a global perspective on the world that you might not get otherwise. You’ll experience empathy like no other.

It is  important to reflect on personal values and principles with which you decide how to approach your life. Learning from the experiences of others is one of the best ways to reflect on your own values and decide what you truly believe.

5. It will help you write

Indeed, poetry will help you write and is a common pastime among many bestselling authors. Many writers looking to self-publish also use writing poetry as training and practice for novel writing. Poetry is incredibly difficult to write. Every word means something and needs to be incredibly precise. Thus, writers can learn a lot by reading the great poets and observing how they craft their art. While novels are often not judged by their language, precision, and diction, some of the best novel writers have a lyrical flow in their words. Any guesses as to how they developed that skill? That’s right! By reading poetry!

Self published authors are estimated to control as much as 50% of the total e-book market share by the year 2020 – and there is no better time to self publish your novel than the next year. If you are currently working on a manuscript or have one already completed, now is one of the best times to get started on the editing process for your book or novel.

Editing sounds like a largely complicated process to authors who have never done it before – but editing your own work can be satisfying and rewarding for writers who take the time to learn how to do it well.

Here are some practical tips for how to edit a novel to ensure the best possible end product when it’s time to publish.

Read Through Several Times

The best editors read through manuscripts several times while they’re editing them. If you’re a writer that’s learning how to edit, this is one of the best and most effective editing skills that you can pick up.

Read through your manuscript several times to make sure that it’s perfect.

Work With a Style Sheet

Along with using storyline notes, writers should learn how to make use of style sheets while editing. A style sheet sounds complicated and fancy, but it’s really just a page where you note things – usually grammatical – that are important and should be the same throughout your manuscript.

For example, do you use “ instead of ‘ for any quotes? Note this in your style sheet, and make sure that your style sheet eventually matches up with your manuscript.

It saves you a lot of time, and it’s a trick that professional editors and proofreaders use to make the process as effective as possible.

Take Notes

Always take notes while you’re writing – and always refer back to these notes while you’re editing. Notes are a writer’s best friend, and it can help you to spot inconsistencies (“What year was this character born?” or “What did I call this character or place in chapter four?”).

Without the use of these notes, editing can turn into a process that feels more like tumbling around in the dark without a flashlight – and that’s because you basically are.

Use notes and refer back to them whenever there’s something you want to change or something that works better – and especially when there’s something that you might not be sure about in your own work.

Use Your Word Processor Right

There are plenty of useful word processor tricks that can help make editing easier for you. Use CTRL+ALT+C to insert a comment into a document (which you can refer back to later on for easier reference), use CTRL+C to copy, use CTRL+V to paste and CTRL+X to cut.

Then, you can use CTRL+F to find things in your manuscript – and from there you can access the replace all settings to get rid of any errors in your manuscript that would be hard to catch throughout.

Learn these word processor tricks. It makes editing a lot easier when you don’t have to click around for settings but have everything right at your fingertips.

Need Help?

While rare, there are some writers who just can’t edit their own work no matter how hard they try to – and if this describes you, a lot of the information in this article might give you the direction you need to make the first round of edits, but you might still feel stuck after the third or second run.

If you need help editing, there are many editing services and freelancers out there who can help you out that don’t charge as much as you imagine.