Okay, we’re gonna talk about how to become a writer.  I’m a writer. I just did that right now. We can all be writers just like that. Let’s get into it. We’ll be talking about what kind of writer; how do you get to the point where you can call yourself a writer.

It’s like, hey what do you do? I’m a writer. Hey, what kind of hobbies do you have? I’m a writer. It can seem daunting you’re probably thinking you’re not.  It may feel like “I’m not a very good writer”.  But no worries, we can all be writers.

Being a writer is actually one of the most beneficial skills you can acquire in life and in business. So let’s unravel it.

1. Read More

The first phase to becoming a writer, you know what,  is not to write at all, it’s to read. This is your ground base to become a better writer. Why? Because when you read you become exposed to good writers. The more you read, the more high-quality writing you are exposed to, also the more ideas you’ll have about things to write about.

That’s one of the biggest problems a lot of people have when they start writing or when they think about becoming a writer. They’re like, I don’t know what to write about? I’m not sure if I sit with the blank paper, I got nothing. I personally read the more blog posts I have, the more prolific I become.

Reading does all sorts of good things for your creative thinking, for your ideas, for just staying engaged with the world. So you’ve to start reading more content to grab new ideas and gain the ability to write on your own.

2. Write Every Day

We’ll start with that second-best thing you need to become a writer. Write every day.

What a thought!

Write more, you’ll become a writer.  But seriously even if you suck at writing, even if you think you’re horrible at writing, make a goal, 200 words a day can be about anything, anything you want. Literally, just sit down, write 200 words every single day about anything and you are going to become a better writer. You will be a writer after a year if you’ve written 200 words a day.

That’s the best way to get started even if it’s uncomfortable. The great thing about doing this is nobody has to know, no one has to see it even if it’s uncomfortable. You just need to do it.  You may think of it as your journal entry, find a hobby you’re interested in, write more about it and whatever it is, it can be about anything but get in the habit of writing every day because that’s gonna allow you to see improvements.

That’s gonna allow you to clarify your thinking and going through the process of writing it’s going to make it much easier for you to identify with the term “Writer”.

3. Share Your Writing

The third thing is once you’re writing every day you might feel compelled at some point to share that writing with somebody else. I’m not saying you gotta write a book, I’m not saying you got to do anything super elaborate. But I  think you should consider starting a blog even if you don’t tell anyone about it at first, even if it’s not a big thing.

Starting a blog has absolutely changed my life. There are 10 solid reasons that make you love blogging. A blog has literally changed my life. I would not be here right now. I would not have this site if it wasn’t for starting a blog.

I would still be in a Bank job, miserable sitting in my day job, not doing cool stuff, like writing for you. But that’s the next step, once you’re reading, once you’re writing, once you’ve got some of those creative ideas.

4. Start a Blog

The next logical step is to start publishing it even if you don’t tell anyone about the blog, putting it out there so that potentially people can start to find your ideas and you can start writing as though somebody might read it eventually and you know, as you start chipping away at that as you start building your confidence with your writing, you might find that a blog is a great outlet for your creative thinking and over the long term you can create a brand.

You can create a business, you can make money, and you can meet a ton of people that have the same interests as you, which I think is one of the most powerful reasons for starting a blog.

5. Read the Book “Everybody Writes”

The next thing you should do if you’re serious about becoming a writer is getting the book Everybody Writes by Ann Handley. That was my starting point. Not if you’re trying to become a freelance writer or not if you’re trying to become a copywriter, but if you’re just trying to become a better writer I think that’s the best book out there.

She recognizes that we’re always writing, we’re always marketing, we’re always promoting even if we don’t realize it and she helps you hone your writing in a way. It’s gonna make you better than that and whether you apply that to your personal life or your business life, either way being better at articulating your thoughts via words, that’s a helpful skill to have.

6. Get Honest Feedback

Next up, you’re in your writing journey, you’re reading more, you started writing, you’ve started a blog, you’re in a writing course. So how do you really start cultivating that and massaging that and getting better at it?

You have to get some honest feedback. You have to get critiques, and I’m not saying like here Mom! read this, because that’s not gonna be honest she’s gonna tell you it’s great (it’s probably not great at all). So you have to start getting real feedback. So how do you find a community of other people that are looking to try and do the same thing?

There’s also a lot of different writing forums on there. You can just Google online writing forums or forums for writers to find more writing specific places where you can get that feedback but you’re not gonna get better if you don’t open yourself up to critiques and it can suck, it can be hard to hear that you’ve worked, spend all this time on, isn’t as good as you think, or that you’re not as good as you think you are. But that constructive feedback is gonna eventually allow you to say I’m a writer and actually believe it.

7. Keep A Journal

Okay! You know what the most common thread, not only among all the best writers I know but all of the most successful is journaling.  Keep a diary, keep a journal, write on a regular basis your thoughts, your feelings, your things that you’re going through emotionally. Doing that, going back to writing 200 words a day you can write on any topic you feel comfortable about.

This is more focusing on yourself, your goals, your motivations, and again anything that’s going to get your thoughts down on paper. It allows you to clarify your thoughts, which is going to be a good thing. Clear thoughts will lead you to become a better writer.

So you’ll get a double whammy with that one. You clarify your thoughts and you’re writing more, which helps you become a better writer.

8. Get Conversational With Your Writing

Next up is to become more conversational with your writing. so the best piece of writing advice probably I’ve ever received from most of the writers. You need to be more conversational, use more contractions. Instead of writing “I am”, write “I’m”. Instead of writing “have not”, write “haven’t”.  it makes you more approachable, it makes things more conversational, it’s easier to read, it flows a little bit better and especially when you’re writing these days. Unless you’re writing like a novel or an academic paper or something like that.

If you’re writing for the web or most of the mediums that you could potentially be sharing these days, a conversational turn is gonna make you more approachable. It’s gonna make it easier to read your work, so I always try to do that often.

9. Write Drunk, Edit Sober

Number nine is “Write drunk, edit sober” The Sturm was generally attributed to Ernest Hemingway, which you can take in a number of different ways, and here’s how I take this term by writing drunk and editing sober.

Basically, that means to let your writing be free-flowing, don’t be stopping, like add links or research things or think about things. Write and just write, get it all out there. Just let it flow out. Worry about the editing, worry about everything else later. Get it out there because as soon as you get too bogged down in the details, you’re gonna start overthinking, and you’re gonna lose your confidence. Especially if you’re just starting out on your writing journey. So don’t worry about all the extraneous stuff.

If you’re writing a blog post, don’t worry about SEO when you’re writing. You can do that in the editing phase. So just write because that’s gonna allow you to get more words out, build more confidence, get more creative ideas out, without getting bogged down with the technical stuff in the details.

10. Recognize Your Motivation

And summing up with our final phase, which is to figure out why you want to become a writer. Because if you know why you want to become a writer, then it’s gonna make it a lot easier to take the right steps to become the type of writer you want to be. If you want to become a writer to create your own courses, and you have to be able to create the content in the courses, and be able to copyright and sell the courses, via sales page. That’s going to send you down one path.

If you want to be a writer because you want to write a fiction novel one day, that’s gonna take you down a different path. Maybe you just want to be a writer so that you can share things with your kids in the future, and have a journal for them to find down the road.

There’re all sorts of different personal reasons but understanding what the motivation is for you and why you identify with that term writer, and why you feel the need to want to become a writer, that’s probably one of the most important things you can do because as you’ll see and as you have seen. There’s a lot of different types of writing out there, technical writing, content writing, SEO writing, copywriting, creative writing, and the list goes on.

So you’ve to recognize which one of those titles most resonates with you and which one of those captions you want to fit into, and then start pursuing your writing journey.

I hope this post is gonna handy in your writing journey. If you are just finding our post for the first time we get new articles frequently that help you build your small business online, that you can run from anywhere on earth. And frankly, writing is an important part of most businesses online these days. I recommend you should start writing ASAP.

So if writing is your jam, if you want to get on board with writing, I recommend you take a look at this post about how to become a freelance writer. I think that freelance writing is the best way to build a business online even if you have no clue where to start because there’s a demand for it. It’s easy or easy as a relative term, but it’s the easiest way to actually start bringing in revenue.

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