Write to Your Strengths to Get Amazing Results

Is it possible your missing the keys to unlocking your writing?

Every day, I get dozens of ideas for stories. If you aren’t having the same experience, it’s because you are not writing down your article ideas. Or you are downgrading them as unworthy. I used to feel the same way. I’d get an idea and not write it down. Then I’d rack my brain, trying to remember my “greatest idea ever.” Or if I remembered my idea, I’d tell myself it was “boring”, “dumb”, or “who cares.”

If you feel you’re missing the keys to unlocking your writing, I’m going to help you.

The first key to unlocking your writing is to record your idea when you get it

I read about writing every day. There isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not reading what other people have to say about the craft. The number 1 repeated item is “Write your ideas down.” I’ve read it so many times it makes me want to puke. I say to myself, “Dah, who doesn’t know that?” SO WHY THE HECK AM I WRITING ABOUT IT? It’s good advice for any writer. In fact, I’d say if you are having any of the following problems, it is the solution.

• Writer’s block
• Lack of ideas
• Being confused
• Feeling overwhelmed
• Wanting to quit writing and get a job washing cars

Write down your ideas. Not later, not in an hour, not when you get out of bed, out of the shower, or off the toilet, but the second you get the idea WRITE IT DOWN!

Here’s what I do:

Think about what everyone carries with them 24/7. If you thought, your wallet, glasses, or underwear, you would be wrong. It’s your cell phone. And unless you are living in the dark ages of flip cell phones, you have a PC in your pocket. I hardly use my phone to call anyone. The #1 app on my phone is “Notes”. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing or who I’m with, when I get an idea it goes into my notes. Here are a few ideas that are in my notes as I write this article (if you like them, go ahead and steal them. I won’t feel bad and I’d love to read how you handled the idea).

“Age doesn’t define you”

“True heroes are not sports stars”

“The first time I met a published author”

“Make the most with what you’ve got”

“Ants and hoppers”

The last idea might be strange. When my kids were little, we watched a movie called A Bug’s Life. It’s a great movie about the ruling class “Hoppers” and the working class “Antz”. I think it would be a great analogy for our current political climate. If you get an idea, write enough to remind you what the story will be about.

The second key to unlocking your writing is to write about things you know well

I read a lot. Give me a book on history, science, math, government, or any fiction book and I’ll gobble it up like a chicken eats corn. I hope you are the same because it will help you with your writing.

I’m not a genius (if you want to read some deep thinking stuff, check out Genius Turner). In college, I majored in theology and minored in math and English. Since I’ve studied them, I could write about them with authority. What I like to write about is writing. It’s a topic that resonates with people. Millions of people have aspired to become a writer. And millions of people have given up on the dream. I have the audacity to think I can help people become writers. So that’s what I write about.

Here’s what I do:

I write about topics I know and feel passionate about. You should do the same. If you are a new writer, don’t grab onto and write about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. I studied it in college. It’s a cool concept. But it’s BORING! I don’t care if you are the Albert Einstein of writing, you’ll never bring that topic to life. Stick with what you know and keep your reader in mind.

Write about your passion (if you’re passionate about The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, go for it. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you). Stick to one or two themes for your writing. Then narrow them down to a niche so you can establish yourself as an authority. This will solve the following problems:

• Writer’s block. You know the topic. You’re passionate about it. And you’ll have ideas flowing through your brain like the Mississippi river. The problem won’t be you don’t have any ideas; it will be you have too many ideas.
• Laborious writing. If it’s taking hours and hours, days and weeks to write a 600-word article, find something else to write about. I read about people who advocate taking hours to write a “good” article. Then sit on it for a few days (I guess to let it cure). Then dive into it again. What the heck! If I were writing a story about my wife, I’d get it done, proofed twice, and published in a couple of hours — TOPS! I wouldn’t struggle for subheadings. I wouldn’t try to figure out what to write about. There would be no need to do a bunch of research. And I wouldn’t find some scholarly papers on the psychology behind why she insists I leave the toilet seat down. I ALREADY KNOW THAT STUFF. I JUST HAVE TO WRITE IT!
• Insecurity. I was an ironworker for 20 years. Do you think I could tell you how to drill a hole in steel? And if you were doing it wrong, would I hesitate to stop you and tell you how to do it right? If you know your topic, you’ll be confident. And your readers will pick up on it and trust you.

The third key to unlocking your writing is learning your craft

I went to college for 8 years. Just thinking about all that time is depressing. But I wanted to be a pastor. And I wanted to speak at a scholarly level and not as an itinerant evangelist in a tent. So I went to college to learn the craft of ministry.

If you want to be a writer, learn your craft. You don’t have to go to college or spend hundreds of hours in training. And you don’t have to buy online writing courses. But you have to learn the rules. If you submit stories full of grammar and spelling errors, it’s a major mistake. And it won’t get the most brilliant article published. Editors are too busy to teach you how to write a sentence.

Here’s what I do:

• Use Grammarly and ProWritingAid. These two applications will do 90% of the heavy lifting. They’ll check your grammar, style, and spelling. I use both because one will catch things the other misses. I’m cheap, so I use the free versions.
• Use AdverbLess. I don’t like adverbs. They’re the words that end in -ly. They typically modify verbs, other adverbs, and adjectives. They’re easy to spot. Here’s an example: Adverbless is incredibly good because it hardly takes any effort to use. Just write it the way you would say it. Adverbless is good because it’s easy to use. It’s fewer words and much clearer. Ok, enough English and pet peeves.
• Use Hemingway App. I love this program. After you’ve written your article, copy and paste it into the app on your desktop. The app will go through your story word-by-word. It will identify difficult to read sentences. And it will find phrases that could be written better. It does a double-check for adverbs and gives you a readability score. I shoot for an age group of 5 to 9 because I like my writing to be simple and readable for most people.

The fourth key is using a text to speech program

Do not trust silent reading to finish your editing. It is a big mistake. Hearing what you’ve written makes you a better writer.

I’ve had people read my writing. It’s helpful, but they aren’t writers, so their suggestions annoy me. They want to help, but their “helping” is often suggestions to change some aspect of the article. I’ll read what I’ve written to my wife. But she loves me so it taints her opinion a bit (she always thinks my stories and ideas are wonderful). The best solution I’ve found is using a text to speech program.

What I do:

Read Aloud is a Chrome extension. Even though it’s free, it has some nice features. It will read in a male or female voice and you can speed up or slow down the reading pace. And it works with a bunch of languages other than English.

After I’ve finished writing, and before I sent it to a publisher, I run my story through Read Aloud. I always catch something that doesn’t sound right. And I have a bad habit of writing “you” instead of “your”. My eyes won’t pick it up, but my ears do.

I love this stuff and could write all day about it. But I’m calling it quits.

If there is one takeaway that I want you to have, it is to write to your strengths. If you do nothing more than that, I’ll read your stories and be amazed. And so will a lot of other people.

Now get writing!