11 Ways to Be a Better Writer After You Have Tried Everything

If you have followed me for some time, I have tried everything. Some pieces I wrote were winners, but I also wrote a lot of failures along the way that is too embarrassing to tell.

At the same time, I have grown and the same will happen to you when you commit yourself to taking writing seriously. Writing is easy but only if you trust the process.

You see, the process is not hard but you need to handle the changes to yourself, your fans, as well as the platform you write on. Not every day will be a good day. There will be some terrible days as a writer.

If you ignore the pain, the other side can be a blessing.

When I started writing two years ago, COVID just started to make a little bit of noise. No one imagined what we would all go through. Not even movies captured the true issues we faced and some issues we still face today.

But COVID worked in my favor as it gave me time as well as a reason to write. I wanted to craft a new path in my life.

When my wife laughed after I made a big old nine cents on my first paycheck, I used that as a goal to beat that number every month.

Any little goal is better than no goal.

Today, I write on a better computer which is 10 times better than my last desktop and my paycheck is much better than my first one.

I won’t lie, I don’t earn the majority of my money from Medium. This platform has done well for me, but my numbers will never break any records here.

So sometimes, you need to learn to freelance and possibly work for someone else as a writer.

Instead of continuing on about myself, let me share 11 tips that will help you as a writer. These are not earth-shattering or even hard, but lessons to help make you become a better writer.

Not every tip will apply to you but there may be a few that do.

11 Tips to help you become a better writer

1. Study your craft

Anyone can write, but writing online is different. No one will judge you if don’t write grammatically correct like in school, but if your work makes sense, you’ll get by.

After you start writing, you need to spend time analyzing your work. Don’t just keep writing unless you spend time studying why some articles perform better than others.

You may notice something about the topic, the headline, or possibly the image. There is a lot more work than you realize how each little part plays a big role in how your article performs.

2. Get out of your comfort zone and stretch

If you expect to have 100s or 1,000s of followers overnight, well, let me tell you, it doesn’t happen like that. You need to put in the work.

No one becomes a successful writer without spending time on their craft. To get followers, you need to do more than tell writers to follow you.

What are you offering them?

If you only write a handful of articles, you’ll likely get a handful of followers.

This may mean you have to give more of yourself on this writing journey. Notice how I said journey.

Writing is not like winning a jackpot in the lottery. You need to put some work into this.

3. After you have written your article, ask yourself would you read this?

When you slap a few sentences together, take time to read them again and again. Then ask yourself, would you read this?

You need to look at your work from the eyes of a reader. You are not writing for yourself, but you are writing for your fans.

Your fans are the ones who pay your bills.

So you need to give them your best work. There were a few times I wrote something but just scrapped it without publishing.

Early on, I published everything. Now I take the time and think, is this my best work?

Would my readers read this?

If the answer is no, then it doesn’t go any further. It gets scrapped and no one will ever see the work.

It may make a couple of cents but after a while, you need to start to give your readers your best work. They expect that from you.

You need to step up your game a little.

4. As Allen Iverson said, “Practice?”

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”

- Benjamin Franklin

If you follow sports, you may remember Philadelphia 76ers Allen Iverson talk about practice in an interview.

Iverson’s team lost a game, but in an interview, he went on a rant talking about practice. He was a star basketball player, a NBA Hall of Famer; as a writer, you need to practice your writing skill if you want to get better.

You need to practice writing to get better every day. If you don’t practice, your writing won’t get any better.

5. Work on your headlines instead of just slapping any words that come to mind

There is an art as well as a science to writing your headline. Your headline deserves almost as much attention as the work you’ve written.

Of course, you won’t spend the same length of time writing your headline as your article. But you do need to spend time making sure the headline is one of the best lines a reader sees.

6. If you want people to follow you, you need to write more

New writers seem to have the wrong idea about getting followers. People will follow you if they love your work. They won’t follow you because you literally beg them. Don’t do that.

If you want to be a real writer, then write. It is as simple as that.

When you write, readers will follow you. They can be your true followers who will come back again to read more. It won’t be the follower you ask to join you because you said you’d follow them back.

7. Invest in yourself

You may have a degree in English, maybe a Master’s or Ph.D. in writing, but as an online writer that means very little.

Writing online differs from writing a paper for school. You are not writing for a teacher but for your reader. A reader’s attention span is limited so you need to write something that is interesting and captures their attention.

So, because of this, you may need to invest in yourself. This may mean buying a Grammarly program, reading tips that top writers share, or join a community of other writers who have a shared interest to be a better writer.

If you don’t invest in yourself, your writing will become stagnant. You need to put either time or money to learn how to improve your writing.

8. Set your writing goal

If you want to be a better writer, you need to set your own personal goal. Your goal is simply that, it is your goal.

So your goal may differ from my goal and every other writer. Each person has their idea of where they want to take their writing career.

Spend time to figure out what you want and then create mini-goals leading you up to that goal.

9. Study the smart writers

“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”

- William Faulkner

If you want to be a better writer, you need to study what the more experienced writers are doing. This does not mean you need to read every writer that crosses your path. Your time is limited.

So you need to spend some time reading the smart writers.

• Study their headlines
• Study the images they use
• Look at how they write and structure their work

Supporting a new writer is okay, but if you want to get better, you need to read what the more experienced writers are doing today.

10. Expect the worst things to happen

You can imagine writing every day for the next few weeks or even months. But there will be times when life interferes.

Life will put you in situations that cause you to lose focus, take limit your time to write, or your personal issues take priority.

There will be times when you have to accept it and possibly find time to work around these disturbances.

11. Give free stuff to your fans

So you want to make money from writing. There is nothing wrong with that. Sure, you need to make a little bit of money.

You have to earn money for the time you put in for your work.

But sometimes, you also need to give a little of yourself for free.

Free stuff is a goldmine for your readers. When you give them something for free, they’ll likely return again and again to read your work.

Maybe one day, if you offer something for sale, they may actually buy something from you.

Basically, this is a great way to earn your reader’s trust. They will go on to become your loyal fans.

What tip did you like best?

Feel free to support my work by becoming a Medium member for $5 a month. I may earn a small percentage and you get to read all the articles on this platform when you join here.