WRITING

The Lessons I Learned From Writing 100+ Articles

A summary of five articles to share knowledge with other writers

As I approach the sixth-month of my writing journey — 105 articles — I began to reflect on what I’ve learned and how I can improve.

So lately I started to re-read older articles. Both my own and others. Today I revisited five, which I thought I’d share with you as follows:

1. Reading
2. Lessons
3. Experiment
4. Income
5. Learning

This piece will touch on each of these elements.

№1 — Reading

When I say reading, I’m referring to speed reading.

“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.”

― Harry S. Truman

The same holds true for writers. That is to say that not all readers are writers, but all writers are readers.

Soon after I started my MBA, I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of content to read and understand so I could critique for each module.

• The problem — volume of content.
• The solution — Read faster, or learn to speed-read

In the article above I wrote about my experience and how I learned to read 50 pages in 5 minutes.

When you nail this skill it’s amazing how much information you absorb and retain in just 300 seconds.

№2— Lessons

I enjoy being part of the Illumination community. I very much enjoy and appreciate the level of engagement extended to me and others, from the entire Illumination crew.

So soon after I joined this wonderful melting-pot of writers I decided to write about my experience in the article below.

I summarised my experience with five simple takeaways:

1. Engagement
2. Community
3. Collaboration
4. Writers are readers
5. Better together

I hope you enjoy reading that one.

№3— Experiment

This past weekend I did something that I’d never tried before. It was an experiment. Here’s a summary of what I did:

• I wrote four articles (five including the one below)
• Of equal quality
• On a related topic — Business, Startups, and Leadership

If you want to know what I did after that and see the results, the piece below contains everything you need to know.

№4 — Income

I was fortunate to have a few successful articles this year, the story below is a step-by-step discussion of one such article and what I discovered.

Along with actual data, my takeaways touch on:

1. Headline
2. Subtitle
3. Main Image
4. Content
5. Secondary images
6. Quotes
7. References
8. Top Writer
9. Marketing

I’d welcome your feedback on this one.

№5 — Learning

Learning from other wonderfully talented writers is, in my opinion, our duty as writers. If we’re not learning we’re not improving.

With that in mind, I thought I’d share an article written by a fellow writer, Sinem, who is quite prolific.

In fact, when I read this “Step-by-Step Guide” I was encouraged to write the article I discussed in number 4 above. I’d learned.

Also, there are lots of great takeaways in Sinem’s piece, so I’d highly recommend checking it out.

This month, I’ve also read work created by George, Julia, Arthur, Salam, Aurora, René, Alvin, Rasheed, Kathryn, Lanu, Dr Ron, Timothy, Volo, Joe, Mary Holden, Lori, Bill, Marty, Desiree, Karen, Michele, 🦄 Chris and many more. The point is that I learn by observing your style as well as your content.

You’re all an incredible source of ideation for me, so Thank You!

Final Thoughts

While I was writing this article the words ‘self-promotion’ crossed my mind as this very piece maybe be viewed as that and rightly so. This ties into my final comments, three recommendations for you to chew on:

1. Read — Great writers are prolific readers. Reading is neural-nutrition, an essential activity that incubates new connections for innovative ideas to form. So read as much as you write.
2. Share to learn — Writing about your own experience is a great way to share insights and tips with other writers. By sharing we learn collectively. As you can, I did this 4 times so far and borrowed the work of another writer for a different perspective here.
3. Self-promote — Lots of writers strongly advise that you must “shamelessly self-promote” your own work. In the past week, I’ve read articles by Dr Mehmet and Casey who both mention this aspect of modern-day writing. You are your best marketing channel, so sweat it.

Keep reading, writing, learning and Illuminating folks!