How I Improved My Writing by Improving My Writing

Four Unproven Strategies for Cursory Writing Success

Since my Medium journey began, I have had many of you reach out, wanting to know how I have managed my writing success, aplenty. Many of you making contact with me specifically, in the hope I’ll share my success secrets.

“Help, me out Mia!” you’ve pleaded, “What are your success secrets?”

“Sure thing,” I say, “Gosh, though. Where to start? So many secrets. So much success”.

Okay, that conversation took place in my head. But it seemed quite real, so let’s continue. Where were we? Oh yes, the many requests for my advice.

Okay, maybe not many of you have reached out, more like some of you have reached out. Well, maybe not so much some, as none. None of you. None of you have reached out. In truth, no-one.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t got strategies to share with you! Just that those strategies aren’t successful ones. Nonetheless, I would still love to share those strategies with you. They may not be successful ones but they are strategies all the same. And now I am sharing them with you!

HERE ARE FOUR STRATEGIES THAT I AM SHARING WITH YOU NOW, WITH NO EVIDENCE THAT THEY WILL ACTUALLY WORK. Try them yourselves!

Strategy #1: CHECK YOUR STATS. A lot!

Writing can be a slog, right? Sometimes it comes easy, some days not so much. On those days where the writing doesn’t flow, what do you do? You eat. You take a lot of snack breaks and sometimes even talk yourself into needless baking activity. The result? You feel crap and haven’t written a thing. And if you happen to have sugar issues, well you’re also cranky and tired, amirite?

Enough of that. I’m here to tell you to stuff that strategy and do what I do instead, which is to: compulsively check your stats. Or better still, refresh non-stop for notifications. Oh, look! Someone liked my thoughtful and measured comment on the futility of training Whippets to show-dog standard, and gave it a clap! There’s your dopamine rush right there. Deploy that dopamine high to write another sentence. Get writing now! Or remove a comma, see what that looks like, then try replacing it. Don’t spend too much time deciding though, that dopamine isn’t going to hang around forever. I mean, it was one fucking clap, use it wisely!

Strategy # 2: DAYDREAM ABOUT YOUR FUTURE WRITING SUCCESS (yes, it is okay to do this when you have writer’s block!)

Take some time out to fantasize about what your life as a successful writer will look like. This is a satisfying thing to do when writer’s block hits but works especially well when you have just knocked out a kick-ass paragraph and want to reward yourself in real-time. Celebrate by opening up a new tab and get to work researching luxury lifestyles. Because that is going to be you one day, thanks to your writing success. The more you fantasize about the trappings of success, the more real it will seem to you. Don’t stop — in your mind, you’re nearly there!

Strategy #3: CREATE SUPER PERSONAL CONTENT THAT REVEALS TO ALL HOW COMPELLING YOU ARE (yes, much like writing in your journal)

Okay, this is a controversial one. Some writers think that to be successful you need to tailor your writing specifically for an audience and have that audience in mind when you write. But to that, I say, really? And then I follow up with a photograph of a towering pile of tattered journals that have been my audience for the last 30 years. Did I need a wide selection of randos reading my journals to create them? No. Case closed.

But before you begin your self-centric musings, there are certain things worth keeping in mind because let’s be honest, readers are part and parcel of online writing platforms and in that respect can be of use to you. My advice here would be to:

Resist the impulse to censor yourself. For example, you didn’t shower for a week in lockdown? That there is a story. Do not hesitate to explore your most unattractive impulses on this platform. If it’s something you can’t tell your family and closest friends, that’s your cue to get writing. And the most unseemly part of what you have to offer? That’s your headline.

Bleed over the page if you have to. Which is to say be vulnerable with your audience. They will love you for it if only in gratitude you don’t live next door. Scour your memory for what I call, ‘Vulnerability Fodder’, and expose those festering wounds of the soul to the sunshine of a mass and anonymous internet audience.

I’m all for going deep, going raw, going all out. In fact, that’s my writing motto which I adhere to religiously, albeit with some small exceptions; those areas of my life I reserve the right to keep private. Topics I consider verboten include, but are not limited to: my dating life, my unchecked use of pharmaceuticals, the unfortunate and deeply personal Twitter disgrace of 2015, various familial estrangements and my array of online addictions. Particularly online shopping. That is NOT up for discussion. Some things just shouldn’t be talked about. I mean, Jesus, have some dignity.

And that brings me to my fourth but most important bit of advice:

Strategy #4: WRITE ABOUT SEX. Duh!

Sure, you have a boring and virtually non-existent sex life and have eschewed experimentation at every opportunity ever presented to you, but seeing as writing about sex is a sure-fire way to attract eyeballs to your work, you cannot — I repeat CAN NOT — afford to ignore this important and salacious clickbait. I mean, topic.

Yes, you heard me right, you are going to have to go there. But fear not, I am here to help and explain how your own unadventurous and frankly, perfunctory, sex life can be repurposed for mass reading.

And no, I am not suggesting you start experimenting and then report back to your readers. Honestly, by the sound of things, you should probably be winding things up completely. No-one wants to hear about your missionary-position antics, sorry. Eueewww.

What I am saying is this: write what you know. Catalog the ways both you and your partner have sabotaged a healthy sex life for the sake of a good night’s sleep. For example, share some of your most creative and inspiring avoidance tactics. When this doesn’t work or your audience is no longer buying the excuses you’ve made to get out of sex (temporary paralysis? seriously?), you’re going to have to try anal. Yes, you heard right. I’m sorry, but do you want to be a writer, or not?

If this all fails, there is one last trick in positioning yourself as a top-rated sex-positive writer which I’ve been using myself. My secret is to simply write a story on any topic and then reverse engineer it to be a sex-related piece. This takes genuine skill, though at times may be as straightforward as randomly inserting the word sex or sexy into your headline.

Take the below examples. If I’ve done my job right you won’t have had any idea which story was originally written with sex in mind and which wasn’t!

Unearned Privilege Makes You Sexy

5 Surefire Sex Ways to Be a Better Neighbour During Coronavirus

Time-Saving Strategies From a Sexy List-Maker

How Gratitude Journaling is Better Than Sex

Surviving the Sex Pandemic

And that’s it in a nutshell dear writer friends. My four unproven strategies for some cursory success:

Check your stats obsessively

Daydream about being a successful writer

Bleed all over your audience

Write about sex even when you don’t want to

So, are you ready now to be great? Even just mediocre? If so I think you’ll find a lot in what I’ve shared here, to point you in one of those directions. Hey, you’re welcome! And remember, my success is your success. I mean, your success is my success. Goddamit, just keep writing!

Mia xx.

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