Developing Effective Writing Skills

What problems do you normally have writing in English? Would you consider yourself a good writer in English? Why is it that many people have good ideas of what to write when confronted with a writing task but end up writing badly? In what ways is writing like building a house?

Attempting to write could be likened to trying to build a house. Before a house is built, preparations are made. Such preparations could take the form of getting a site for the building project, designing a building plan that would spell out the type of building and its component parts, the positioning of the bedrooms and other facilities in the proposed building. In the same manner, a writer must first of all be definite about the goal of his writing assignment and the type of writing he wants to embark upon and what that type of writing entails. Thus, there is the need for planning, choosing a topic, narrowing the topic and preparing a dominant thesis or thesis statement.