51 Lines of Advice to Write Words That Will Outlive You
Ideas are not enough.
Orson Welles once said that a movie “must be better to see the second or third time than the first. There must be more in it to see at once than any person can grasp.”
The same goes for great television like The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm. They pack so many jokes into every episode that each rewatch reveals something new.
As a writer, this is my goal. To create ridiculously readable articles that age like a fine wine. The first step is sitting down and writing — but the second is realizing how much left you have to learn.
After several years and over two hundred published articles, I found the single best thing you can do is become a student of the craft.
Every time I come across a writing tip worth sharing, I save it to my “second brain” with Notion. Below you will find 51 of my favorites from best-selling authors, iconic marketers, Twitter luminaries, poets, comedians, stoics, and more.
It’s a mix of common advice, personal preference, strange quotes, and highly actionable insights.
Read them. Apply them. Learn from them.
Most importantly, enjoy them.
- Write what you want to read.
- Write as you talk.
- Read your words out loud.
- Be concise.
- Be teachable.
- Study pre-internet copywriters — Mel Martin, Howard Luck Gossage, and David Ogilvy to start.
- “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” — Steve Martin
- “Stop when you’ve got something left to say.” — Hemingway
- Avoid little words. They ruin sentences.
- Keep a list of mistakes you make often.
- “Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it.” — William Zinsser
- Vary sentence length.
- Steal cadence, not content.
- Write what you know.
- Know what you’ve read.
- Repackage your work and build a serendipity vehicle.
- Replace adjectives with data.
- Don’t judge. Do observe.
- Write the world as you see it. Not what you want it to be or what it should be.
- Don’t think too hard.
- “Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end, the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don’t do it.” — Steven Pressfield
- Write a captivating first sentence.
- Find your eidtor.
- “Lower your expectations. The happiest authors are the ones that don’t expect much.” — Seth Godin
- Avoid distractions.
- Be a storyteller (not a rambler).
- Use stories & statistics to highlight your points.
- Don’t keep your thoughts to yourself: “As a writer, you can change the world from your couch.” — Julian Shapiro
- Rewrite for clarity.
- Make the reader feel “seen.”
- Don’t treat creativity as a lightning strike.
- Ideas are cheap. Ideas are easy. Take responsibility for everything that comes after a good idea.
- Don’t delay the “big truth” too long.
- Always be researching, recording, and reading.
- Writer's block? Go do interesting things.
- Pull inspiration from everywhere: “I would have my mind of such a quality as this; it should be equipped with many arts, many precepts, and patterns of conduct taken from many epochs of history; but all should blend harmoniously into one.” — Seneca
- If you can say it in less, say it in less.
- “Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.” — Ogilvy
- Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to work at it.
- People who think well tend to write well.
- Get a notebook and carry it everywhere.
- Write like you’re writing to a human.
- Stop worrying about being a good writer.
- Agitate your reader’s pain.
- Be patient: “You cannot plant an acorn in the morning and expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of an oak.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- Write at different times of the day: “No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.” — H.P. Lovecraft
- Have discipline. You can’t practice without discipline.
- Write what you yourself sincerely think and feel.
- Write for skimmers.
- Don’t be afraid to call yourself a writer: “A writer is a writer when he says he is.” — Steven Pressfield
- “You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do, anyway.” — John Steinbeck
Final Thoughts
The advice above may only contribute to the tiniest part of your process. But I hope each line teaches and inspires you as they have for me.
Now, it’s up to you to apply it. How you let a piece of wisdom influence your decisions in the seconds, days, and weeks after learning separates ordinary and extraordinary writers.
Wishing you all the best on your writer’s journey.