Seven Actionable Writing Tips For Aspiring and Experienced Writers

Although I have been writing and editing for more than a decade, I am still on the learning curve of my content writing journey.

I am usually the one asking the questions, but recently I was invited to be interviewed as part of a writing platform's Creators Interviews series.

It was an excellent opportunity to take a critical look at my journey so far and also evaluate the lessons I have learned along the way.

Stay tuned as I share this detailed summary of the most revealing parts of the interview.

7 Actionable Writing Tips

1. There’s always a bigger fish in the pond

This is probably some of the best advice for both experienced and aspiring writers.

So you are at the beginning of your journey, and when you take the first step on the “journey of a thousand miles,” two things can happen that will jeopardize your success:

You look at the horizon to find waves of writers as far as the eye can see. Your energy dwindles, or, even worse, you give up.

You think the finish line seems to be just around the corner and start sprinting to get ahead of everyone as fast as possible.

Both are wrong, and the latter breaks a golden rule I learned in my army days.

Don’t run, if you can simply walk to your objective.

Everyone dreams of being the G.O.A.T. But the Apex creator does not exist anywhere in the space-time continuum.

Who is the best creator? That is a matter of opinion or perspective.

Therefore, do not rush it, and success will come.

2. Writing in the 21 century is about synergy, not seclusion

We are far away from the early 6th-century monk secluded in a scriptorium copying ancient texts.

Nowadays, writers need to bond under the umbrella of a new relational model.

We should work together as a cohort, building synergies and cross-pollinating each other work across the blogosphere. Many writers still play The Cadavre Exquis game made famous by surrealist writers from the mid-1920s onwards.

Birds of a feather flock together.

3. Know yourself so you can focus on the reader

Writing is not about being original. Writing is about finding your unique voice (or voices) and understanding the inner works of your daemon (or daemons).

Daemon is ancient Greek for “divine spirit or power.” Every time a hero dies in the Illiad, the daemon escapes the body to join the gods.

Hence, we all have our "daemons," and we cannot understand what lights up the reader’s spirit if we don’t even connect with our own, as Socrates explains:

To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.

4. Writing is a neverending learning process

Writing is like riding a bicycle; to keep your balance, you must keep moving. And by this, I don’t only mean you need to build a writing routine. A great deal of “writing” is done effortlessly.

I often tell my students that my best headlines and hooks are written in my dreams while I sleep.

Almost every morning, I wake up with a new headline on my mind. I grab my cellphone and type it straightaway. This also explains why I have so many entries in my queue.

5. Understand the great law of karma

Writing is as much about giving as it is about receiving. The more you give, the more you get.

As you sow, so shall you reap.

If your writing comes from your core, it will echo in your readers’ hearts, and they will reciprocate by staying with you longer for way longer than those 37 seconds that Worldometer tells us is the average reading time a blog post gets.

6. Write without fear

A decade ago, I started my journey seeking to become a content creator. Now, I want to bring my A-game, so I’m stepping up to an all-new level as I aspire to join the league of content disruptors.

This means implementing a new content approach that is even more inclusive of different viewpoints and perspectives, hence becoming more defying, innovative, and subverting as it generates ideas that leapfrog ahead.

7. Become an adamant link in the writing chain

I have explained this concept here. I urge you to become a meaningful link in the writing chain that binds us in the writers’ cohort. Even the tiniest ring in the chain holds it together.

Bond is stronger than blood.

Parting thoughts

Thank you for taking the time to learn more about my journey as a writer, and I hope you found the above tips insightful and helpful in your journey through the writing maze.

You can read the interview here if you’d like to know me a little better and learn more about my journey and more insightful writing tips.

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