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How I Went From “Shitty” Writer to “Sort-Of-Decent” Writer in a Year
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Last year, I decided that I wanted to learn content marketing.
The only problem?
I was an awful writer. Like, embarrassingly awful. My target readers avoided my content at all costs – which, from an outside perspective, made sense. Nobody likes to vomit.
But somehow – through hard work or the grace of a transcendent power, I don’t know – I was able to improve. I went from a “nobody” writer to writing and managing the content strategy for a high-growth startup, all in one year’s time.
Here’s how I did it:
1) I imitated (with caution).
Establishing a writing “style” is hard as f**k.
I know because I tried — and miserably failed — for five months to do it.
Embarrassingly, my struggles continued until I discovered a quote from William Zinsser in his book, On Writing Well, only two months ago:
“Never hesitate to imitate another writer,” William wrote. “Imitation is part of the creative process for anyone learning an art or a craft. Bach and Picasso didn’t spring full-blown as Bach and Picasso; they needed models. This is especially true of writing.”
I can confidently say that my own style, whatever stage it may be in, has developed tremendously from following this advice, and I recommend it if you want to do the same.
But be careful.
When I discovered that quote, I was also reading Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, an absolute masterpiece of a novel. The combination of William’s advice and Ray’s brilliant style spawned an absurd idea in my head.
“What if I could copy Ray Bradbury’s style and develop my own from his influence? If I practiced every day, I think I could do it!”
Spoiler: I couldn’t.
Every time I wrote, I felt as if Ray’s ghost was standing behind me, whispering abuse in my ear:
“You call those sentences? I could shit better sentences than that. Look at all those grammar errors and cliches… my god. You’re a disgrace.”
I couldn’t even manage a single word. It was hellish.
So, if you choose to practice this, I have one piece of advice:
Stay within reality’s boundaries.
2) I hired professional editors (but not often).
A few months ago, I hired Greg, a professional editor, to critique my writing.
My plan for Greg was simple:
I had recently written an article that was due for publishing on the beyourself Medium page, and I wanted to impress their readers, so I hired him to kill the remaining errors in my piece before it went live.
“I’m giving this guy such an easy time,” I thought.
By that point, I had furiously self-edited the article and was confident that Greg wouldn’t spend more than a day fixing my tiny mistakes. And I was right.
He sent me his finished work the next morning.
And when I opened it, I was blinded by a gang of red highlights.
“No,” I thought. “This can’t be right.”
All those “polished” sentences and paragraphs, all those “elegant” metaphors I had scattered about the piece — Greg tore them apart, and he shattered my ego in the process.
But that was exactly what I needed.
Months of self-editing had conditioned me to overlook the stupid mistakes in my drafts. It was as if the “pronoun switches,” “fatty words,” and “logical errors” in my writing were camouflaged.
With the extra set of eyes that Greg provided, however, spotting (and fixing) them was easy.
I haven’t worked with Greg since the last massacre — but I need to. The knowledge he gave me from one editing session has carried over to every article I’ve written since.
Thanks, Greg.
3) I wrote and edited every day.
“Writing every day” wasn’t new to me. I was ~~ ahead of the curve ~~ and had established that habit a few months before.
But something still felt…. missing.
Daily writing was great, but I wasn’t writing better words because of it. Rather, it was only helping me to overcome my fear of writing (think, exposure therapy). I wasn’t practicing “good writing” until I started editing.
“Editing,” I thought. “That’s it.”
Editing was my process of turning shitty words into decent ones.
It was where I actually applied the skills I was learning, like “varying sentence length” and “cutting fat” and “creating transitions.” In the words of a cliched gym analogy…
Editing was like exercising, while daily writing was like getting over the fear of judgment from other gym-goers.
They’re both necessary — but it didn’t make sense to only practice one or the other. So I started doing both.
Have you ever wondered how I’m able to consistently produce breathtakingly immaculate words with such grace and flutili… flul… fluidity?
That’s how.
...
If you’re interested, I also wrote a full post about this on my blog and added a few extra tips. Give it a read!
http://blog.amarsden.com/5-ways-to-go-from-shitty-writer-to-sort-of-decent-writer/
Tell me: what have you done to improve your writing? I’d love to know.
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February 04, 2018 at 09:07PM