A lot of people struggle with writing.
It’s often because they didn’t learn the correct way to do it in school.
Fortunately, learning to write well is quite straightforward – if you apply an effective system.
Writing is the most powerful habit that you can develop. This isn’t exaggeration, it’s a statement of what an important cornerstone writing is in your business and personal life. Learn to write clearly, and all your communication will feel more effortless and get you better results, too.
Let’s look at a system to improve your writing:
1. Start with a daily habit
Just like going to the gym, if you set aside a regular, structured time to write, you’ll be amazed at the differences you’ll start seeing.
Everyone has a time of the day where they do their best work, and it’s different for everyone. These optimal hours are an overlap of your most productive hours and (ironically) your least productive hours. At the tail end of your most productive time of the day, you’ll find your brain needs to switch gears to stay effective.
Take 90 minutes at the tail end of your most productive time and wall yourself off from distractions. Turn your ringer off, get rid of anything that will divert your attention and dive into your writing task.
2. Find Your Reason to Write
Everyone is motivated to write for different reasons. You may want to practice your writing just for yourself – in a journaling style, perhaps. Or, you may want to improve your writing for business purposes. Some people write in order to learn more about a subject by training themselves to research ideas and express those concepts in their own words.
There are endless reasons. Just find the one that resonates with you.
3. Set Your Creative Constraints
A mistake most writers make is not setting constraints on their writing. Don’t just set a goal to “start writing”. This leads to an overwhelming number of decisions that will probably make you quit before you get too far.
Set some parameters –
Time: How long will you write for? 30 minutes? 60 minutes?
Topic: Are your writing about financial advice, productivity tips, marketing tactics?
Length: Is it a short, concise 250-word blog, or a 5,000 word essay?
Environment: Be consistent for consistent results. Where do you do your best writing – at your desk, outside, in a coffee shop (but beware of distractions)
4. Destroy Perfectionism
To master good writing, give yourself permission to create junk.
Don’t try and do meaningful work-related writing when you first set this time aside. Write about anything. Just let thoughts flow. Observe how your words flow by reading it out loud to yourself to gain insights into how well you’ve communicated your thoughts.
Don’t worry if your writing doesn’t feel perfect at first, second or even the tenth attempt. Even great writers have issues with the quality of their writing. Kurt Vonnegut once said, “When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth”. This coming from a man who wrote some of the most pivotal novels of the 20th century!
5. Overcome Procrastination
No matter what you think is the “best” time to write, it will never be perfect. Don’t get addicted to planning. Focus on execution.
If you like fishing, you could research the best time for the fish to be biting. But then, you’ll probably worry about what is the best rod and reel to use, so you’ll do more research on that. Then, you’ll be preoccupied with which lure to use, so you may end up shopping endlessly to determine which one will get the biggest fish.
Or, you could take the fishing equipment you have now and just start fishing. Maybe the fish will bite, maybe they won’t. What elements can be changed to help you catch more fish? You’ll be able to make decisions based on experience now, not spiral into endless research on what you should do before you even get to the lake.
Now that you’ve started writing, you can then focus on editing. Which leads to the next tip –
6. Edit Effectively
Writing is only half the game. Editing is what creates the final product that you are aiming for.
Here are a few quick tips on how to edit effectively:
- Take a break – don’t read your writing immediately after you finish. Give your brain a break first.
- Read it out loud – You’ll discover the rhythm of your writing this way. This technique will tell you where to improve the flow of your writing.
- Remove filler words and weak verbs – Keep your sentences lean and your verbs strong
- Discard weak adjectives – Words like “really” or “very” don’t add anything to the description of nouns and pronouns.
- Use a good grammar checker – We are awash in digital automation. Use it to your advantage.
The bottom line is – no matter how you practice the craft of writing, it will have a tremendous effect on your career, your creativity, and your own personal communications.
