Editor’s Choice — Top 10:

How To Go From Writing Crap to Writing Well Using Four Insights

Let’s have a peek at our top 10 stories today

Do you think your writing is good? Or are you ashamed that your work is not good? Whatever you say in your head, you’re probably churning out crap if you’ve just started your writing journey.

But how can you move away from writing crap? How can you learn to write well?

“You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence,” Octavia E. Butler, author of Kindred, says.

But how can you be persistent? How can you find a topic every day to write? What if your life experiences are unexciting and dull?

“Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt,” Sylvia Plath said.

You can persistently write about your life by improvising here and there. What if a family member, an ex, or a friend reads your story? Wouldn’t that be embarrassing?

“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you write will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise, you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it,” the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, suggests.

Now you know the first three steps to move your writing from crap to good: 1)write daily, 2)use imagination to improvise, and 3)assume that nobody is going to read it.

There is one more step to master.

No matter how good you become at writing, the readers are always going to judge you. How do they weigh your worth? They read only the heading and the first few sentences — the hook.

Do you find writing your hook challenging? What’s the best way to write the first sentence?

“The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written,” says Joyce Carol Oates. She is 82 years old, and she has written 58 novels.

Start writing what you want to write. Write a provisional heading and a tentative first sentence. Go on and finish your piece. Once it is done, go back to the first sentence — and your headline. You can use Headline Studio for checking the score of your headline.

If you follow these four steps seriously, you will see your writing improving gradually.

Here is a list of our top 10 stories today — by writers who are moving in the right direction:

10. Writing Has Given Me Anxiety

Sylvia Emokpae is a hustler by day, mother all the time. Inspired by normal life occurrences because, in hindsight, everything we do is interesting. Chocolate addict.

She is an excellent writer. Her writing style is honest, frank, and engaging. Do check her other work.

Writing is my muse. It is my salvation. My therapy. I love writing and I have learned to love myself because of it. I thank my husband for pushing me to do it, and my son for inspiring me daily to write about my experiences as a mother.

Mostly, I thank myself for the commitment I have been able to stick to so far in building my career writing, despite having zero experience in the field.

9. 4 Things Years of Porn Addiction Has Done to Me

Louis Petrik is interested in Finances, programming, and psychology. Figuring out life, one idea at a time.

He is an outstanding writer. His writing style is honest, sincere, and very engaging. Do check his other work.

Writing this piece hurts. For years I did something very damaging to me — it’s painful to realize that.

It’s about the consumption of pornography on the Internet. At first glance, it sounds harmless. Especially older people seem to underestimate the danger — but pornography has evolved.

8. Why Not Delete Some Useless Words Before You Hit Publish

I wrote it. A part of my efforts to raise editorial standards of Illumination articles.

Your reader’s time is money.

If you can reach your point with fewer words, do it. What’s the best way to do that? Learn to press the delete key more often.

7. When Work Becomes a Death Sentence

Kathy Brunner is an entrepreneur, business coach, people watcher, and firestarter. Create your encore career and go from Burned Out to Fired Up!

She is an excellent writer. Her writing style is straightforward, direct, and very engaging. Do check her other work.

It’s important to learn how to be sure it’s your job and not you standing in your way of success.

What do you remember about the first real job you had?

6. Tales from Dublin’s Notorious HIV/AIDS Separation Unit

Simon Doherty is a London-based writer and this is his blog.

He is an exceptional writer. His writing style is informative, reliable, and very engaging. Do check his other work.

Abag of heroin was much easier to acquire than a job for the people of Dublin in 1979. A combination of overcrowding, containerisation of cargo at the docks (resulting in a dramatic loss of employment) and newly-available, cheap heroin from Iran had set the scene for an epidemic in opioid abuse.

Research reveals that, by 1982, one in 10 people aged 15 to 24 in parts of Dublin’s inner city had tried heroin. The crisis was reflected in the police statistics of the time; Dublin saw five drug charges in 1979 and 177 in 1982.

5. How to Make Better Use of Your Life While You Are on Autopilot

Bill Abbate is a leadership writer, coach, and editor in ILLUMINATION.

He is an exceptional writer. His writing style is informative, detailed, logical, and highly engaging. Do check his other work.

Have you noticed how much of life just happens with little input from us? We go through the day, week, month, and year wondering at the end of it where the time went. It’s no wonder life seems to go by faster each year when we miss so much of it.

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” Robert Frost

4. How To Effectively Edit Your Own Writing

Alice Vuong is living life imperfectly and as creatively as possible. She writes about creativity, motherhood, and personal growth.

She is an excellent writer. Her writing style is frank, easy to read, and extremely engaging. Don’t miss this one. Also, check her other work.

I am my own worst editor. I can’t really tell if my writing is good or bad. I just know that, now that the words are out of my brain and on the page, it’s what I have to work with.

Despite this fact, I still edit my own work.

3. 4 Einstein Traits That Led To His Colossal Success

David Gerken is a meditation and mindfulness teacher. Dad of three precious kids. Former Washington, DC political aide and Writer for THE WEST WING.

He is an excellent writer. His writing style is accurate, reliable, and very engaging. Do check his other work.

Albert Einstein is considered by many to be the most brilliant human being ever to grace planet Earth. But most people jump to inaccurate conclusions regarding the elements of Einstein’s genius. They think of him as that humorless, grinder in high school who had his nose in books six hours a night and had no life.

2. The White People In The Comments

Steve QJ writes about racism, politics, and culture. Sometimes other things. Almost always polite.

He is an extraordinary writer. His writing style is candid, serious, and very engaging. Do check his other work.

This piece is going viral.

According to the writer Gyles Brandreth, the average person says around 860,341,500 words during their lifetime. If you start speaking at one and live to be eighty, that’s about thirty thousand words a day.

Most of those words will be forgotten by everybody, including you, as soon as they’re out of your mouth. Others will stick around for a few weeks before drifting into obscurity. But now and then, somebody says something we remember for years or even generations afterwards. Something which expresses just the right idea, in just the right way, at just the right time.

1. The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century Isn’t “Sexy” Anymore

At number one, it is Nishi Kashyap. Dreamer. Achiever. Explorer.

She is a good writer. Her style is honest, witty, and engaging. Do check her other work.

This piece is going viral.

Are you a data scientist?

If yes. Well, then you must be feeling pretty damn “Sexy”.

Sexy doing the hottest job of the century. Sexy being in the highest position, Sexy of being considered as a most demanded person. Sexy dealing with glamorous artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, and all. Sexy earning around $13K to $120K per year. Sexy living your dream life while doing your so-called dream job.

This post is part of the Top 10 Series — you can meet 500+ top writers with these links:

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Final Thoughts

If your story was selected in the Top 10, please share another story with a brief introduction and a short convincing review — in the comments. (Please write the review in the third person and start it with your name.)

I must have missed something today. I cannot read every story on Illumination and Illumination-Curated. I try — and fail daily — to read all of the great articles.

Please join our private Facebook group for Illumination writers to post your articles daily. Also, I invite you to become a writer for my publication — positive minds.

Iꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ꜰɪɴᴅ ᴀɴʏ ᴍɪsᴛᴀᴋᴇ, ᴛʏᴘᴏ, ᴏʀ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ᴇʀʀᴏʀ, ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ʟᴇᴀᴠᴇ ᴀ ᴘʀɪᴠᴀᴛᴇ ɴᴏᴛᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ᴄᴏʀʀᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴ. Tʜᴀɴᴋs.

To be included as a top 10 writer read these curation guidelines carefully.

You can read my curated stories here.