Writing
Your Guide to Writing (Almost) Everything
A collection on the principles and mechanics of writing
Readers love to read about writing. Stories like “How to Write 10,000 Words a Week” and “Power Up Your Language to Revolutionize Your Freelance Life” consistently attract thousands of readers to Forge, Medium’s in-house self-improvement publication, and have prompted us to develop a key pillar of Forge’s mission: that one of the most important ways you can improve yourself is by getting better at expressing yourself.
No project is more emblematic of this goal than “How to Write Anything,” a collection of stories on how to write — the principles and mechanics of the process — but also about how to write now, when every single one of us writes (and reads) constantly. As we said in the introduction to this collection: “You tweet. You email. You Slack. You text. Multiple times a day, you look at a blank screen and you fill it with words — your own words written in your own style for an audience you hope to persuade, amuse, inform.”
Because there’s no screen more ripe for self-expression than a blank Medium screen, one of the stories in “How to Write Anything” offers Medium-specific guidance from Darius Foroux, one of Medium’s most popular writers.
Here’s Foroux’s advice about writing for a Medium audience in “How to Write an Article Millions of People Will Read”:
- Pick a single reader
- Take that reader on a specific journey
- Choose one or two authors you love, and practice writing like them
- Have a trademark
- Embrace feedback
While the four other stories in this collection primarily address more specific types of writing, we think they’re really about certain principles you can apply to all of your work.
Drew Magary’s story about how to Tweet is about being focused on the reader even when you’re writing about yourself.
Kara Cutruzzula’s story on how to write a follow-up email is really about the art of persuasion.
Julia Pugachevsky’s story on creating a great dating profile is really about how to tell the story of your life. Or maybe a story of your life. It’s about crafting any kind of personal narrative.
Chuck Thompson’s story about writing digital obituaries is about the importance of specificity and detail in your work — evocative nuances that readers will feel in their hearts, not just their minds.
This collection is about how to write anything, no matter who you are or in what format your writing appears, but we think it’s especially useful for the format you’re employing right now: the medium of Medium.
