Improve Your Writing, Improve Your Life!

[bryanj4]

Day 2 of the 30 Day Steemit Challenge

Creating value for others vastly improves your chances of getting ahead in life. One of the best ways to create value for others is to create content and write. I want to create value for others in the cryptocurrency space so I decided to improve my writing skills. A Google search of improve writing skills and create compelling content brought me to some great content, especially from Buffer and Grammarly. The best pieces of advice they gave me are practice, feedback matters, and other miscellaneous items.

One of the best methods to improve your writing is to practice, practice, and practice even more. Writing is definitely a mental game for me. I want everything to be perfect, cohesive, and nice, but at the end of the day, I need to make mistakes and learn about what works and does not. Practice is the best form of learning and making mistakes for most people is viewed as a failure. The key to success when learning, based on my experience and others, is to not view a mistake as a failure, but view it as an opportunity to learn and grow. Be compassionate with yourself and understand that you will make mistakes at first and those mistakes will only make you stronger! When you write, understand that it is a process. First, you will have an outline, write a draft, edit your writing, and then publish your work. One of my favorite quotes from researching this topic was give yourself permission to write badly, and just start. - Belle Beth Cooper. You do not have to edit your work all the time, and getting feedback from others is another way to improve your writing.

Feedback is necessary to improve writing. The purpose of writing is to convey ideas, thoughts and/or feelings. Feedback can help define what your target audience knows and does not. Feedback helps define the base layer of knowledge you should assume your readers have and where to start when you convey new ideas. Correcting grammar mistakes and checking thought flow is important to keep your readers engaged. Frequently I have found myself losing the flow in articles and my dad’s feedback has helped me tremendously. Finding friends or business associates who can review your work and do the same for others will improve your writing.

Other pieces of advice I found included write how you speak, keep it short, writing is just the beginning, and never stop reading. Write how you speak is a great piece of advice. I find that by saying what I write helps identify whether I make sense or if the sentences flow. Keeping sentences, paragraphs, and ideas short enable the reader to understand and read the material better. Getting to the point and not be muddling an idea is an art. The more you write the more time you will end up editing. Writing bad drafts is easy but editing into something great is the true artwork. I found many more pieces of advice on these four blog posts: Grammarly, Buffer, Buffer, and Enchanting Marketing.
To be a true master of any art, skill, or talent one must understand that you never stop being the student.

Insights and Struggles

I had some struggles with writing this article and the biggest reason is that I did not plan. I decided to plan and use an editorial calendar for organizing my plans. I used Airtable for my editorial calendar. Airtable is a more intuitive and faster version of MS Excel and Google Sheets. I highly recommend checking them out and using them over all other excel-like software.

Next Article

Create Content, Create Value is the headline of my next article. I will go over different types of content, how you can monetize it, and how creating values for others builds online reputation.

Written with Love by Jake Bryan
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Comments

[norma-jean]

Thanks for great insight into writing @bryanj4. The other part of the equation --- one that must not be overlooked -- is that all great writers are voracious readers. The best advice is to "write write write, and read read read!"

You might like this article I posted a while back. It agrees with several of your points. Click HERE

Keep on keeping on. Great job!!

[bryanj4]

I really enjoyed your article @norma-jean!!! I'm following you now and cannot wait to see what you write next.

[norma-jean]

Thanks @bryanj4. I've only been hanging around Steemit for just over a month. Still looking for writers, and those interested in writing. (And those not really "interested" but wanting to improve their skills anyway. LOL)

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