How to Improve Your Writing: an uncommon truth

How do you improve your writing? There's no question that there's money to be made selling information online.

You only have to look at people like Brian Clark and Darren Rowse to know that you can wake up one day, start blogging, and end up rich and famous!

There's a clear path from your brain to your fingertips on the keyboard that leads to creating written materials on the computer screen. Those words published on a blog can reach millions of people world-wide since there are 1.4 billion people connected to the Internet.

So what do you think the difference is between the big guys and you? Don't tell me you think they're brilliant and you're not because I'm not buying it. Talent is overrated. It's an excuse to hide behind.

For every gifted person I've seen on the Internet, I've seen a hundred who aren't making any money. Plenty of average intelligence people are.

Don't believe me? Read the book Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin.

So it's not talent that makes the difference between writing that makes money and writing that barely gets read. It's practice and hard work. I can hear you groan. Many of you yearn to learn that 'get rich quick' is a true story when it comes to the Internet.

Writing isn't any different from playing the piano or hitting a top-spin forehand down the line. It gets better with practice. Why wouldn't it?

Yet it's a known fact that most people aren't posting often enough on their business blogs. What better practice could there be than writing and publishing daily on a blog?

And you want to know why I think you aren't practicing? Because it's not fun. As enjoyable as it can be to write and publish a blog, practice involves rewriting, editing, asking for help, and studying what other good blog authors are doing, how they're writing.

Smart bloggers like Sonia Simone lets a post simmer for two days and rewrites and tweaks it before hitting the publish button. She cares enough to hone her skills and make a post the best it can be. And her readers appreciate her.

Here's more about this book, Talent is Overrated:

One of the most popular Fortune articles in many years was a cover story called “What It Takes to Be Great.” Geoff Colvin offered new evidence that top performers in any field--from Tiger Woods and Winston Churchill to Warren Buffett and Jack Welch--are not determined by their inborn talents. Greatness doesn’t come from DNA but from practice and perseverance honed over decades.

And not just plain old hard work, like your grandmother might have advocated, but a very specific kind of work. The key is how you practice, how you analyze the results of your progress and learn from your mistakes, that enables you to achieve greatness.

Geoff Colvin, Fortune’s senior editor at large, is one of America’s most respected business journalists. I recommend reading this book.

There are many ways to apply the lessons to your business, your writing, your sports and anything in which you would like to succeed.

Practice, perseverance, and writing are hard work. But the progress you make is visible and rewarding. I don't write anything like I did when I first started this blog. Some of my earlier stuff is just plain embarassing. But I kept on and I will keep on learning, practicing and improving.

The uncommon truth is that people like Brian and Darren and many others kept at it, and asked for feedback and honed their skills through hard work and diligence. You can do that too. Are you?

Comments

[Jenny Pilley]

Excellent post. Of course, like many things that are creative such as designing and writing, people can have a natural flare but that doesn't tend to last forever. To keep the same standard you need to practice and keep designing, writing and doing so in different ways no just what you know you are good at.