My Most Shared Writing Advice from 2020

I didn’t set out to write about writing. But I find myself writing about writing because the content resonates with a large audience. The Write Path, the publication in which this article is published, reached 1000 followers a few months ago, which still surprises me because I don’t promote it, much.

Writing is a practice I love because it kicks my ass in a good way, like exercise.

You hate it while doing it, but afterward, you feel great. It is hard, challenging, and can always improve. Perfection can’t be the goal because it doesn’t exist. I’m not a great writer, or even a good one, but I know I can be. I know I’m better than I was one year ago, and I’ll be better one year from now.

I keep the book The Elements of Style by Strunk and White and On Writing Well by Zinsser on my writing desk and often refer to them as constant physical reminders that anyone can become a good writer with practice. I’m learning out loud with my audience, and it couldn’t be more fun.

As Jerry Seinfeld recently said on The Tim Ferriss Show:

"Writing is the most difficult thing in the world to do."

Seinfeld is one of the few celebrities I admire because of his work ethic. He micromanaged every line, script, casting choice on Seinfeld, that little kind-of-successful show.

Below - my most shared content about writing from 2020.

On schedule:

All successful writers schedule a time to write — every single one of them.

The point is to carve out a specific time, even if it’s small, and stick to it. I find it’s more realistic to accomplish my writing goals when the goal is to write for X amount of hours first thing in the morning at a specific time, instead of something like I’ll write 500 words per day for six months.

The second goal sounds too daunting and vague. Because let’s face it, no, I won’t. The former is more doable — more likely to get accomplished.

On routine and systems:

What you can control.

For success, focus more on the system and not the goal. The only thing you can control is how much you write. You control how much you contribute. You control whether you set up a daily writing habit.

Motivation is unreliable. You need a system.

Your system is how often you write, where you write, what time of day you write, how often you submit to publications, whether you take a class to get better at writing, when you edit and how you break down an article to make it clear and concise for your readers.

A writing system is what drives your life toward what you want, your goal — to make money from writing.

For success, focus more on the system and not the goal.

If you don’t have a writing routine, you will burn out or give up. Routine is what makes writers go from novice to professional. You must have a routine because the system becomes a habit. If you rely on inspiration alone, you will write maybe once a week or less.

Concentrate on the system of writing. The system of writing can be broken down into three parts; ideation, creation, and editing.

On triggers or rituals:

Find your creative triggers.

Creative triggers or rituals are what you do that puts you in the mood to write. They are important because they act as prompts to get into the writing mindset.

A trigger or a ritual is something that tells your brain it’s time to write.

Mine are caffeine, having an established headline that I think will do well, and reaching for my noise-canceling headphones. These are all signals that put me in the creative mindset, prompts that tell me I’m getting into deep work.

Don’t complicate it. It can be one ritual you do each morning.

On separating out the three elements of the writing process: ideation, creation, editing:

Batch tasks.

The biggest influence on my writing schedule in the last year has been task batching.

It has made not only a big difference in the volume of content I create but in the energy output it requires to create it.

There are three parts to creating content — ideation, creation, and editing.

When I separate these tasks and assign them to different days, by staying focused on one task per day, each task requires a lot less energy because I’m not switching from one task to another that requires a different way of thinking.

We use a different part of our brain to write than we do to edit. When you switch from writing to editing on the same day, the time it takes to change and use a different part of your brain slows you down. Stay on one task, preferably one task per day.

On audience:

Your audience reads you for your opinion, have one.

Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going. — Zinsser

Learn to read your audience.

Success from growing an audience feeds your writing.

The more writing I produce, the bigger my audience gets. The bigger my audience gets, the more comments and questions I receive.

When I impact a person’s life positively, it fuels me to keep writing. I don’t believe there is a bigger motivator, not even money, than affecting someone’s life to keep up the writing habit.

On getting it out the door:

It’s important to remember that a post out the door is better than one that sits in your draft folder. Forget about perfection. If you’re waiting to write the perfect post, your writing will die a sad death on your hard drive and never see the light of day.

But if you hit publish, what you will learn will be priceless.

Care more about quantity; consistency beats perfection if you want growth as a content creator.

On quantity vs. quality:

The quantity of your content is more important than any one piece of content you’ll write.

However, quality writing is the only sure thing that will make you a successful writer on any platform. Both of these sentences can be true. So, while you’re creating lots of content — you push out the door — aim for quality. The two go hand in hand because the more pieces you write, the more practice you give yourself (even if those pieces don’t land). The more chances you give yourself to write better, the faster it will happen.

You can’t force people to read your work. But if you put in the effort to increase your writing frequency, your chances of producing a viral article that makes money will increase significantly.

You never know which story will take off, but you’ll have a greater chance of one taking off if you write many stories. Similar to playing the lottery. The odds are in your favor. Once one story goes viral, you’ll think it took no time at all.

Most of the articles I write don’t gain much traction, they earn dollars, but it is the accumulative output of my work that counts. Because out of the quantity of articles you produce, some will land, some will be great and gain a lot of attention and traction.

The compound return of writing a lot of content seems to be relevant when it comes to this platform — earnings add up and compound over time.

On writing is a skill, not talent only:

When you write daily, you get better.

Some writers think writing is a talent, not a skill, but I’m not of that thinking.

If you can learn it, it’s a skill.

Writing is a skill that can be nurtured, and to nurture it, you have to get as many words on the page as you can, and they reshape what you have written. This can take many drafts. Sometimes up to ten.

According to Seth Godin,

The thing is, almost everything that matters is a skill. If even one person is able to learn it, if even one person is able to use effort and training to get good at something, it’s a skill.

It’s entirely possible that some skills are easier for talented people to learn. It’s entirely possible you don’t want to spend the energy and dedicate the effort to learn that next skill.

Start with jam-session writing, a stream of consciousness, or Morning Pages.

Then sculpt those words: delete, rearrange, write sentences over and over again until they are clear and concise. The more you have to work with, the easier to sculpt into something worth reading.

Writing takes work, even for the talented.

Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard. — Zinsser

On being yourself as you write:

Readers read certain writers for their personalities. This does not mean you ignore craft.

There are two parts to writing and gaining an audience, the first part is craft, and the second Zinsser speaks of is attitude.

The craft you can master through practice and active learning — like reading Zinsser’s book On Writing Well — taking a writing class, and working with an editor. My writing gets better every time I work with a talented editor.

The second part of the equation — attitude — is “how you use that skill to express your personality.”

Zinsser says, write how you speak. Don’t use words you wouldn’t use in conversation.

If you’re not a person who says “indeed” or “moreover,” or who calls someone an individual (“he’s a fine individual”), please don’t write it. — Zinsser

On reading aloud:

Reading aloud is required.

All great writers read aloud before sending it off into the world.

Before I release my work, I go over it once more, reading it aloud, and am amazed at how much clutter can still be cut.

Reading aloud is an easy way to spot mistakes, clunky writing, and sentences that don’t sound right to the ear. The eye may glance over awkward parts; the ear never misses them.

When reading aloud, mark any parts that stumble or drag, then go back and rewrite those sentences or cut them.

On strengthening the muscle:

I now have experience writing anywhere from six to ten articles per week, and it is much easier now than when I first started. The muscle is developed. The first couple of months were really hard, but once I got over that hump — my writing muscle stronger — it takes a lot less bandwidth to write an article from start to finish.

Work the muscle, and you will be surprised how much you can write in one week.

On viral content:

There are many articles out there on how to write a viral story. They are hogwash. You can’t set out to write a viral story unless you have an established audience.

Viral content is the result of consistent writing over some time.

Each writer’s journey is different and depends on several factors — writing experience, number of followers, topics, headlines. But the number one predictor is keeping at it until you succeed. You won’t succeed if you stop trying.

On working for free:

To go from novice writer to never-have-to-work-in-an-office-again writer, realize being a professional writer is not only about writing. It’s about a lot more than writing.

When you don’t see a lot of movement towards your monetary goals, you need to believe that writing for free, in the beginning, will eventually lead to writing that makes an income.

Work for free in the beginning while you create a backlog of useful content to turn into a course or eBook one day. Engage in life-long learning to add value to your audience.

A professional writer has many hats to wear, one of which is writing. If you’re serious about making an income that supports you full-time, it requires other skill sets you may have to bone up on or learn from scratch, like marketing and creating a blog or a landing page.

Writers are continually learning.

On success:

Success comes after dedicated, obsessive focus on something you want.

“All great achievements are the result of sustained focus over time — all of them.” Gary Keller

Focus and persistence are what separates the mediocre from someone with abundance. You define abundance in anything you desire — money, love, happiness, shoes. Whatever it is, someone who has success did things to get there that other people were unwilling to do.

Part of getting what you want is knowing what you have to give up to get it.

If you want to upgrade your life, you need to upgrade your level of thinking. Because if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve always gotten.

Maybe you can’t see success right now. I know what that is like. You have to believe that you’ll see success down the road if you put in the work required. I did. That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to give up; I did want to, several times. It took three months for a story to take off, earning me close to 5K to date.

When you don’t see a lot of movement towards your monetary goals, you need to believe that writing for free, in the beginning, will eventually lead to writing that makes an income.

A lot of people give up right before success is about to blossom. If you can keep going when success isn’t there, you will see it. You won’t see it if you give up.

On editing

Just write, and forget about editing while writing.

After you write, sculpt and refine in the editing process, just like an artist sculpts clay into a masterpiece. A lot of marble was chipped away before Michelangelo achieved his masterpiece David.

I print each story, read it aloud, walk back and forth in my living room with a red pen in my hand, cut out extra words, highlight sentences that drag and stumble, and then rewrite them again and again until they made sense.

Crafting words to make sense for the reader is where the hard work of writing comes, “rewriting is the essence of writing.”

Zinsser points out in On Writing Well “professional writers rewrite their sentences over and over and then rewrite what they have rewritten.”

You want a lot of words to work with because, in the editing process, you will make your piece bleed with red ink and chip away to get to the essence of an article, eliminating the clutter as you edit.

Editing removes words that don’t serve a sentence, paragraph, or story to achieve the greatest clarity and strength.

The secret to good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leave the reader unsure of who is doing what — these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. — Zinsser

On what to write about:

Nearly everything has already been written about, but not by you.

If many readers are commenting on something specific, it is a sure sign that other people will be interested in that topic.

Everyone takes/borrows/steals from other writers.

Inspiration is everywhere if you’re present and keep your eyes open. There is so much going on in the world right now; write about something that sparks your curiosity or your ire; if you write it with confidence and clarity, people will read it.

When you have a strong opinion about something, share it. The confidence in your beliefs will jump off the page and resonate with your reader; even if it is negatively and your reader strongly disagrees, well, they’re still reading your writing. Maybe they will leave a thoughtful comment and share their perspective.

This will give you another angle from which to write your next article.

On not quitting:

The genius thing that we did was we didn’t give up. — Jay Z

Keep going.

You will have a higher chance of success if you keep persevering. You will have zero chance of success if you stop now.

On what to write about (2):

As Jeff Goins writes,

“I’m not kidding when I say what you write about doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. At the end of the day, there is one box you need to check, and it reads:

Have I written?

Check YES/NO”

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Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering Type A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.