How am I getting better at Writing ….

Published in

Writers Guild

6 min readMar 7, 2019

“The ultimate test of your knowledge is your capacity to convey it to another” Richard Feynman

In this post, I am discussing inhibitions that a budding writer can have and strategies to overcome them. This post is not about just tips and tricks as there can be no one tactics that fits all. Some strategies can be adopted based on the individual’s writing contour moulded to their personalities.

I remember as a child how much I enjoyed writing prose, comprehensions and inferences for experiments so much so that I wanted to pursue a career in a field that partly showcased my writing skills.

Recollecting, why I enjoyed writing the most during my childhood was because,

I read quite a lot of books in order to be able to write and also mimic some writers
I loved visualising/reliving the experiences every time I penned down and re-read the writings
Simply saw it as an opportunity to improve my vocabulary(I stayed in a community where children were from all over India and English was the only medium of communication)I still remember how I used the word dwindling in a conversation “The rain is dwindling now”:-D
Improved creativity and narrative abilities. I loved storytelling and have been reprimanded for using the same superpower to walk scot free of any wrongdoing as a child :-P

As I grew older, doubts about my writing grew too. I never really took efforts to nurture my writing skills and lately have realised how important is writing as a skill. Because, in the current age, writing/blogging serves as a digital record and helps us to revisit thoughts, opinions from time to time on various subjects that we write and some of our opinions on those change over a period of time too.

I have been lately finding it a tad difficult to write, on introspecting and comparing the current scenario to my childhood, here are my thoughts,

Topics

“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”
―Arthur Conan Doyle

Most of the times the real struggle is that I think a zillion times in my mind if the subject is even worth writing or too obvious. Also, realised that this has been a stumbling block to even attempt writing ever since I have become an adult.

Why do I feel that way?

When I begin to write, I look for posts that are similar to the topic that is on my mind. Honestly speaking, this isn’t a good idea because my thought process is influenced instead of being inspired. While the latter can be beneficial and the former slightly alters my thought process.

“Our doubts are traitors,
and make us lose the good we oft might win,
by fearing to attempt.”
―William Shakespeare

What am I doing about it?

Be intuitive: the moment a topic comes to my mind instead of research on the topic, I simply start writing. This has almost been a failproof method by far. And only use the web as a source of reference and not as a source of content.

Be authentic: I try to draw inspiration from the current state affairs in my personal and professional life. This helps in the free flow of thoughts.

I read as much as I can from the vast majority of sources ranging from blogs to books on subjects like lifestyle, culture, science, technology and startups(this is because I have a thing for startups). Reading has helped me with the vocabulary, subjects, perspectives and helps me to convey the most complex things in a simple way.

“If you cannot explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it” Richard Feynman

Time

“Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time,’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to.”
― Lao Tzu

An interesting observation is, I always have enough time for activities I enjoy the most be it reading, watching movies, outdoor activities.

I enjoy writing and have the tendency to procrastinate as it sometimes does not seem like an easy activity where I can collate all thoughts at one go. It requires sincere efforts and investment of time to be able to write about a subject.

Why do I feel that way?

Thorough understanding of the subject; many times I have found it extremely difficult to write content for subjects where I had shallow thoughts which in turn looks like a huge investment of time to assimilate thoughts to write. Results can be stretchy, not well-written content.

What am I doing about it?

Increase the odds of being more thoughtful about diverse topics, a couple of interesting ways I do is to listen to podcasts, blinkist, audibles which helps you process information at a much higher speed than that of time taken to read a book. Human speech is about roughly 110–150 wpm and it is quite easy to process information in the form of audiobooks. Audiobooks have been a solace mostly because it does not require dedicated time and can be heard at one’s own convenience, doing any chores.

So when the flash of ideas occurs to me, I simply start documenting or writing/highlighting them somewhere just to ensure I don't lose them in the trail of thoughts. At least this way I am at it.

For being time efficient, I follow the book “Five-second rule” by Mel Robbins. I simply count five, four, three, two, one… and get to work. Not just for writing, I also see this as a great way to break a negative cycle and create new and better habits.

Learn to tell stories

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Joan Didion

Power of storytelling is phenomenal and it only requires plain words and some creativity to form narratives.

Simple hack :

Once we narrow down the subject that we choose to write, exercises to be followed,

Visualise the character you would want to narrate this for and put yourself in his shoes. (For eg: I visualise a person reading the content and seek answers for questions like where he is from, what will be his takeaway, what does he do)
Narrate it a couple of times before you put them into words
Voila, go ahead write and keep iterating till you feel that you get the context from vast majority’s vantage point.

Simply make it a compelling habit

Habits are formed by the repetition of particular acts. They are strengthened by an increase in the number of repeated acts. Habits are also weakened or broken, and contrary habits are formed by the repetition of contrary acts- Mortimer Adler

Old habits die hard, establishing habits and to remain committed requires a lot of dedication and willpower. An easier way to establish is to keep writing every day and might sound a lot easier to be said than done.

What am I doing about it?

In the beginning, it was a bit difficult to be articulate about the thoughts or pen down anything that came to my mind. I just kept writing or at least attempted to every day for a bare minimum time. I noticed a paradigm shift in my thought process and was able to write more with every passing day. The aesthetics of the content like structure, grammar, inference, who we are writing for will improve over a course of time when we stay invested in this habit.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. — Will Durant

Hope this helps you to become a Bloggerati very soon.

Adios…

If you liked my post or have any feedback, please feel free to write to me.

Follow me on the twitter handle Ramyarag and https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramya-raghavan-5067573a/

www.tarkalabs.com