You try to write something powerful and beautiful, but give up before you can even start. You feel like you just don’t have the words, the ideas, the imagery, or even the time to do it justice.
Can you relate?
Mm hmm, me too. My past is littered with the carcasses of great ideas and projects that never made it out the door because I was waiting for something “more”.
Shinier ideas. Glossier graphics. Fancier gear. More of that special sauce all the bestselling writers, bloggers, and creatives seem to have on tap 24/7.
I don’t know what “it” is, but it’s nebulous and shiny and I want it!
Now here’s the kicker: It’s all a lie.
I’ll say it one more time for all y’all in the back: IT’S ALL A LIE.
There is no special sauce, nebulous something, or whatever else we’re convinced we’re lacking. There’s simply showing up to write or wringing your hands over not writing.
Which one have you been doing lately?
But What If I Can’t Write?
Really? Says who? Maybe you can’t do it that well right now, but nothing’s stopping you from blossoming into a master wordsmith with time and practice. Nothing except your waiting around for the perfect ideas and expressions to fall into your lap.
Come on now. Stop it with that daydreaming.
Is there a technical side to writing books, blog posts, essays, screenplays, and all that good stuff? Yes.
Do you need to master craft, nuance, and wordplay? Yes, and it’ll make your head spin if it’s all brand new to you.
And yes, you can only wing it for so long before you crash and burn if you really don’t know what you’re doing. It’s real out there, y’all.
But today I wanna be the one to encourage you to write again and give your words a chance. Give your stories a chance. Get them out on paper before you judge their worth or right to exist.
I mean, have you ever seen a first draft before it’s edited? It’s clunky enough to make your toes curl, LOL.
So, how do you become a better writer?
Like this: CREATE.
(C)ultivate
(R)elease
(E)xperiment
(A)ct
(T)end
(E)xpand
And you already know I’m gonna break it down for you so you can work it!
Let’s begin.
6 Ways To Be A Better Writer
1. Cultivate
Cultivate your ideas. Cultivate your style. Don’t kill your ideas before they’re even born!
Think of all the great books and blogs you love, and consider if the authors had choked their ideas before they could grow into beautiful words and movements. I’m guessing your life wouldn’t be enriched as it is now, right?
Here’s a nugget for you: How do you know that your words and ideas won’t do the same thing for at least one other person when you share them?
You can’t tell ahead of time what’ll catch fire and what won’t, so you might as well get it out of your belly and pour it all out on paper. You can always edit it later anyway. What’s the worst that can happen?
And if you’re still hesitating, just remember that a blank page never changed anyone’s life, transformed a broken relationship, or rekindled a dead dream.
Chew on that the next time you feel like chickening out on your assignment.
2. Release
Now that you’ve written down your thoughts and ideas, it’s time to share them with others.
Why yes, I did just say that. Breathe, girl; you ain’t gonna die! You just feel like you will, haha. Breathe, say a prayer, and put it out there.
Because here’s the thing: You won’t get better without any constructive feedback. You might think you’re hot stuff when your thoughts are still muddled and rambling, so yeah.
Zero feedback is the kiss of death for your craft. Don’t go it alone.
Show one other person. Show a small group of people. Heck, post it online if you’re that brave already, but don’t do all that work and bury it in a drawer somewhere.
It stings to have your work critiqued and sometimes even ripped apart, yes, but how can you grow without making mistakes and learning from them? How do you become a master without recognising and overcoming the novice’s errors?
I mean, it’s not like you could walk perfectly when you took your first steps as a toddler. Why should writing be any different?
You see, writing is a skill, a craft, and a discipline. Nobody grows and excels in isolation. You may be alone when you’re writing, but you shouldn’t be alone all the time and still expect genius to flow from your fingertips anyway.
Get it down and put it out!
3. Experiment
Sooo, now that you’re cultivating and releasing your ideas, it’s time to experiment!
How will you keep sharing your words? There’re so many options.
Short posts. Long essays. Podcasts or YouTube videos. eBooks. Illustrated books! And so on.
There’s also social media of course, but your body of work shouldn’t depend on how witty or engaging your captions are and how many people tap the heart button.
Gather all your content in one place. Try different things and see what works for you, but please, don’t give your excuses any more airtime. They’ve stolen quite enough from you already, don’t you think?
Personally, I’ve found that blog posts are my sweet spot. Well, blog posts and love letters really, but I digress. Social media captions never went deep enough to tap all that I had to say, and honestly? It just wasn’t the same as being able to dig my teeth into an idea and flesh it out without one eye on the word count.
Snippets, shorts, and graphics are great fun, but nobody grows by nibbling at tidbits of information. Retrain yourself to eat and digest weightier content that challenges you, and then dare yourself to produce something like it.
Yup, we’re going there.
You love thought-provoking podcasts and documentaries? Wonderful. What’s stopping you from writing your own podcast script? You probably have at least one great idea in your cache that’d make for engrossing listening. So again, what’s stopping you?
“I don’t have the right mic! I’m not tech-savvy! I don’t have the time! I don’t have any ideas! I hate my voice!”
Mm hmm, that’s exactly what I told myself years ago when I first thought of starting my own podcast.
Are you really telling me that some research and saving up won’t eradicate those excuses and unleash the fire inside of you? Come on now!
Maybe you haven’t realised it yet, but nearly everything you watch or enjoy online starts with great writing and experimenting with how to deliver it. Podcasts and videos have scripts so the hosts don’t ramble.
Unless it’s entirely spontaneous and unfiltered, online content seems so seamless and perfect because it’s been worked on behind the scenes.
If you’re serious about being a better writer, discovering the best way to deliver your words and ideas is non-negotiable.
Hear me clearly: Hiding your head in the sand and blindly doing what you’ve always done will suffocate your creativity in the long run.
Are you OK with that?
4. Act
Writing’s like working out. The more you do, the better you get. The more you move, the faster and stronger you get.
In this case, the more you act on your ideas, the sharper you get. Do more, move more, be more. It’s simple, not easy.
When people ask me how they can write better and I tell them to just start, it seems like I’m blowing them off, but I’m really being honest. Knowing all the best techniques and time-saving hacks doesn’t mean anything if 6 months go by and you still haven’t released a single thing.
Nothing you learn makes a difference until you use it. If you act on what you already know, your creativity explodes and your productivity skyrockets. But if you sit on what you already know, then your creativity withers and your productivity stalls.
Do you see now why just starting is the only way to cut through the lies and white noise strangling your gorgeous ideas before you can even birth them?
Yes, it takes time to master your craft and get anywhere near what you know you’re capable of. I totally agree. It also takes endurance and stamina. You need all 3, amen?
But here’s what we often forget though: Endurance and stamina don’t happen in a vacuum, they happen in motion.
Ooh! Imma say that one more time ’cause I need y’all to hear me:
Endurance and stamina don’t happen in a vacuum, they happen in motion.
And that means that just sitting around waiting to become better without putting in the work first is wasting your time and killing your potential.
You don’t get better at writing by thinking about it or even reading about it. You only become a better writer by writing as much and as often as you can. Day in, day out. No excuses.
Quit wishing and start working.
5. Tend
When you’re making something important and you’re in your groove, stuff’s gonna pop up to try and stop you.
You might get sick. Your fam acts out. Your friends are shady or not supportive. Your schedule bulges with all kinds of emergencies and urgencies and and and.
What do you do?
That depends on the difference between a genuine emergency and an urgent distraction.
A genuine emergency looks like someone who’s sick, grieving, or in serious distress. An urgent distraction looks like people trying to lure you back into time-wasting activities that eat up all your free time and creative ideas.
You gotta tend your creative habit if you wanna be a better writer. That looks different for each person, but I can tell you that your writing won’t take care of itself if you don’t.
Remember when I said writing is a discipline? This is exactly what I mean.
It’s why you want to write a book but haven’t yet even though you’ve had the idea for 15 years.
It’s why you low-key want your own YouTube channel but barely have any videos to your name.
It’s why you don’t have a collection of short stories yet because you’re still waiting for the perfect one before you begin. (Spoiler alert: It’s not coming until you write it.)
Tend your ideas. Tend your words. Take note of the ideas that keep coming back or popping up because they’re probably bigger than one single post or video, and that’s your cue to expand them.
I’ll give you a personal example.
Back in 2017, I wrote my free eBook The Empathy Project. My idea started as a Facebook post that grew into a 4,000-word essay over the next few months.
I could never have done it justice in a few hundred words on Facebook or a couple hundred characters on Twitter, you feel me? There just wasn’t enough space to develop it fully on social media, but there was more than enough space in my eBook!
And the crazy thing is, I only realised that The Empathy Project was bigger than a social media post because I’d been tending my creative habit for a while. The words wouldn’t quit bugging me until I wrote them down, so clearly I was on to something.
But I’d have missed it if I wasn’t paying attention and willing to dig a bit deeper, which is why tending your ideas is crucial.
We miss a lot of creative gems because we’re not showing up day after day to dig for gold. How can you notice the big things if you don’t have a system or structure to capture and nurture the small things?
Quit shortchanging yourself and your ideas. Tend your writing and don’t get distracted by shiny baubles.
6. Expand
This is where everything else comes together. When you’re able to create, release, experiment, act, and tend, you’re ready to expand your capacity, ideas, and output.
That means going from barely scratching out a 500-word blog post to fluidly writing a 10,000-word short story.
It looks like going from crafting a series of 5,000-word essays to producing a 50,000-word eBook.
You grow from barely being able to write a solid paragraph to writing enough stellar paragraphs to fill a 300-page book on wellbeing and exercise.
See the progression?
You start small, really small, and you grow from there. You start where you are and build on that.
Don’t wait to be excellent before you dare to begin. Dare to begin now so you can be excellent later.
You can’t expand anything you don’t put out or begin. There’s no output or capacity to enhance if you haven’t already been showing up, putting in the work, and flexing your creative muscles.
How can you expand your brilliant idea into a book if you haven’t learned to write about any idea and keep going no matter what?
Because there’ll always be a reason to stop. There’ll always be a rational reason to delay your writing, your creativity, your growth until “later”.
You’ll do it later. You’ll start later. You’ll buckle down and write later.
When the kids leave home. When you get a better job. When you retire. When you relocate and live in a more vibrant city. When when when.
Mm hmm. And how’s that working out for you lately?
Show me one thing you swore you’d write “later” that you actually did write. Go on, I’ll wait. *Sips some tea*
Find anything? Yeah, me neither. We gotta do better, y’all.
The only way to be a better writer is to stack up enough hours of practice to get faster, sharper, stronger, and tougher.
And because we all know that repetition helps us learn better, I’ll say it again:
The only way to be a better writer is to stack up enough hours of practice to get faster, sharper, stronger, and tougher.
It’ll cost you your excuses and passivity, but it’ll also birth richer ideas that truly change you and the people around you.
What To Do Next
If you’re still reading, congratulations! That was quite the workout, wasn’t it?
That’s kind of the whole point. Being a better writer depends on how well and how often you CREATE, and you need stamina for that. You need endurance for that. I won’t sugarcoat or oversimplify it, but I can tell you that showing up again and again is already half the battle.
If you’d like practical tips to run with, read this, this, and this. Oh, and this.
Want a shot of adrenaline for your creativity? Try this, this, this, and this.
Just want someone to hug you and tell you you’ll be OK?
*Virtual bear hug* You got this! You’ll be OK! Now get to work, LOL.
And just to keep you on your toes: What’s one thing you’re gonna commit to finishing in the next 30 days?
Tell me all about it in the comments below.
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