Quit mindlessly reading writing tips. Here’s what to do instead
Write & Muse: Article 2 of my reflective pieces on the craft, the industry, and the writer's lifeArticle 1: The First Post Sickness: Why starting a blog is so daunting
“Every writer I know has trouble writing. ”
— Joseph Heller
Why are you here on Medium, searching scores of articles for tips, when you’re supposed to be writing?
Aha, I caught you.
But you’re not alone in this whole ‘let me brush up on my skills before I start’ venture: this is, by far, the most popular way we writers love to procrastinate. It gives us a sense of accomplishment to mask the fact that we haven’t put words down to paper: I spent an hour reading article after article about writing descriptions, therefore I must have learnt something!
Yeah… but no.
You’re learning, definitely, but it’s not efficient. And you could be doing so much more than clicking ‘open in new tab’ for every other article you come across.
By merely reading, you’re prioritizing passive learning over active learning
Think back to your college or high school days: the students dozing off during presentations and those seatmates watching movies during lectures come to mind.
Lectures, slides, notes, words, and more words: just reading is a form of passive learning. There is minimal engagement with the material, and you’re merely processing the words as they are.
How does this affect you, then? We do have to consider that passive learning still benefits us to some extent: it provides us with new information and enables self-education.
But how can we make the most out of it?
The answer lies in balance.
Read with purpose, question with intention, apply with vigor
It’s tempting to just mindlessly scroll — that’s what websites have been programming us to do in order to turn traffic into profits for them. But reading through the 349th paragraph of ‘how to write vivid descriptions’ will turn your brain into utter goop.
But that, dear writer, is not active learning. In order to maximize your learning output, passive and active learning has to be well-balanced. But how exactly do you engage in active learning?
You practice in purposeful reading, questioning with intention, and applying with vigor. Let’s supply this with a nifty mnemonic: P-Q-A. Purpose, Questioning, Application.
And this isn’t anything that I plucked out of thin air: this idea comes from many other learning techniques, such as the SQ3R and PQRST methods. But what I found was that you don’t have to be that vigorous or extensive with reading tips & articles.
So, how does this whole shtick work?
1) Purposeful Reading: When you read an article with writing tips, ask yourself what specific information are you seeking from it: what exactly do you want? And then, cut directly to that information.
This means that you don’t have to wade through all that information in that article titled ‘100 ways to describe a character’s appearance.’
2) Question with intention: is the advice enough to educate me, or is it too shallow? How useful is it to me? Does it apply to me?
If you’re rereading what you’ve already heard from someone, close the tab and move on. If the advice is just neatly pre-packaged from another blog, close the tab and move on.
Also, some advice like ‘you have to write every day’ or ‘you have to eliminate all adverbs from your novel’ do not apply to everyone.
3) Apply with vigor: it’s time to open up your docs. Take what you’ve learnt from the article and apply it to your writing — write that description, or work on characterizing your MC.
What’s any good with merely reading if you don’t practice it right off the bat?
One more thing: limit yourself to a number of articles & stop clicking on source links
When I was starting out as a writer, I used to religiously open up every other source that the article author had in their posts, and soon, my Chrome browser was ready to explode with 328 browser tabs open.
I’d then go on to read every one of those articles — only to realize how repetitive the advice had become.
When you go on an article-reading spiral and click on every affliated link, you’re at risk of falling into an echo chamber: a place where things just get stated and re-stated. And the real danger of echo chambers is when not-so-great advice gets reinforced — you end up tending to believe it, and that can cause a lot of problems. Really, a ton of it.
One way to stop this is to place an upper limit to articles. Mine’s usually five: any more than that, I go guns blazin’ and weed out the lower-quality ones.
But remember — it’s okay to procrastinate. It’s okay to mindlessly read sometimes.
We’re humans, not word-producing machines. You don’t have to always be on the edge. You don’t have to always be practicing.
You can always take days off and read as much articles as you want — and remember, passive learning is still learning. You’ll still absorb information that will help you in your writing.
So, go out now, adventurer. Go seek your articles — but wring out the most of them all. Because mining one diamond is more valuable than collecting a thousand pebbles.
Mittu Ravi writes poetry, short stories, and opiniated essays on the writing life and industry. Find more of their work and their socials here.
