Asking writers how to write is useless.
It isn’t that they don’t want to help you. The problem is that writers don’t know how they do what they do.
They give you advice like always write at the same desk at the same time (not always practical), read lots of great writers (and then what?) and carry a notebook so you can write down ideas as they come to you (and then what???).
If any of that helps you, great. But advice like that tends to only help folks who are already writers.
It doesn’t actually tell you how they do what they do.
Writers don’t know how to write. They simply… write. Whatever process they follow is outside their awareness.
But it isn’t outside mine.
In my studies of applied psychology, I learned techniques for extracting unconscious competence and turning it into a set of learnable processes. And I turned these skills on my ability to write quickly and easily.
The result is I Wrote This On A Monday – a practical guide overflowing with actual advice on how to write.
It doesn’t cover sentence structure or how to use imagery. No, it’s more fundamental than that. Not all writers are poetic grammarians, but all writers write.
I Wrote This On A Monday teaches you how to think through your writing projects, show up to your work station and use your time well.
If the only requirement is that writers write, then this teaches you to be a writer.
And don’t get to thinking that this is all pointless in the age of chatbots. Learning to write quickly and easily has plenty of benefits:
- In a world saturated with slop, human writing stands out,
- Writing gets your ideas flowing. I’ve come up with ideas for entire new products while writing to sell other ones,
- When you write instead of outsource – whether to a codeghost or a freelancer – you connect with your audience better,
- The simple pride that comes from doing honest, meaningful, creative work,
- Writing allows your personality to ooze through, and branding is mostly about personality,
- It’s often quicker to write something yourself than wrangle a chatbot to do it, once you factor in all the wrangling and editing,
- It helps you learn what great writing sounds like, which you need to know to prompt chatbots and edit their outputs anyway,
- Writing is fun, especially the way I teach you to do it,
- The skills you learn transfer. Learning to write faster teaches you how to create podcasts, videos and interviews faster,
- Your writing is probably smoother, more persuasive and more interesting than chatbot slop. And if it isn’t, it will be after you get some practice in,
- All creative outlets allow you to express something deep, meaningful and personal. When you write something instead of outsource it, it reflects something inside of you that needed saying,
- It’s better to automate the tedious, clinical and impersonal parts of your business than the meaningful, personal parts like writing.
Reap all these benefits when you read I Wrote This On A Monday: