Deliberately Practicing Your Writing Will Improve Your Skills.

Becoming A Writer

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Deliberately Practicing Your Writing Will Improve Your Skills.

Episode 13 of Becoming A Writer podcast.

Rubina G Gomes

May 03, 2024

Transcript

Hello, my writer friends! Rubina here. For our thirteenth conversation, we are going to talk about how deliberately practicing your writing will improve your skills.

After years of feeling overwhelmed to write but intensely wanting to write, in mid-2021, I took the leap of faith and started my Medium and Substack pages.

I was scared to my bones. The fear of failing was hanging like a sword over my head. But I knew it was now or never. I knew I had to keep my fears, distractions and ego aside and give writing my all. And I had to give it in a way that would show me some form of progress.

I took a couple of months to plan my play, and then, in August 2021, I launched away. Within three months, I intrinsically knew I was a writer, and it wasn't some fancy thought I had. By the end of the year, the analytics of these two pages confirmed that my words were worthy of being read.

What I did differently this time was I was deliberately practising my writing. While earlier, I was running like a headless chicken, this time, I was focused on practising one aspect of my writing until I got the initial hang of it and got immediate feedback to improve myself.

I came across the phrase 'deliberate practice' in Cal Newport's book, Deep Work. At its core, deliberate practice requires:

1. your attention to be focused tightly on a specific skill or idea you're trying to improve or master;

2. you get feedback on your work so you can fix your approach to keep it working and improving for you.

You don't need to make any massive changes. You are just moving the needle a little bit and seeing what happens. Then, you adjust the course accordingly.

To make this work, I started off with setting an appointment with my writer self.

I figured out which times during the day was convenient for me and my writer self to meet. After months of trial and error, I found three timeslots –

two hours early in the morning before the rest of the world woke up,
post-lunch, when it was siesta time for my family,
post-dinner when all the chores and errands of the day were done and nobody would need me anymore.

Another best time I can get my writing done happens, maybe once a month, when I am home alone. When this rare occasion occurs, I do a quick dance party like Chandler, then dash to my desk and let my fingers dance on the keyboard.

I don't get to write in all of these timeslots, but I know these are when I can get most of my writing done with the least distractions and disturbances.

Next, I made a simple writing success plan. I knew anything complicated or hard would make me return to my shell. So, I had to come up with a plan so easy that not being able to follow it would be strange.

So, my goal with writing and publishing my essays online was to publish them five times a week for six months non-stop. That's it. It didn't need to be the best, longest, or the most philosophical writing. My aim was to show up as a writer. I knew once I achieved this goal, it would become easier to tackle the next goal.

I turned every step in my plan into a goalpost. Having a simple and immediate goalpost like ''hit publish every day'' better motivated me to keep writing than the ultimate goalpost like ''publish a book.'' It is because of hitting publish every day on my essays that I can now hit publish on my book.

Next, what worked in my favour was writing in public.

This doesn't mean you have to post your writings online like I did. You simply need feedback from someone to let you know what's working or not in your writing.

Publishing on Medium came in very handy for me here. I had words I wanted someone to read, and Medium has a massive reader base who wants words to read. It was a perfect marriage. With every essay I published, I got the hang of what my readers liked or didn't, what they resonated with, and what they wanted to read more about. With this feedback in hand, I could then improve my following essay. Over time, their feedback led me to write my first book, Soul Writer vs. Social Writer.

The other important person who gave me feedback was me. I hadn't even considered that I, myself, would have some suggestions to give my writer self. Again, I forgot that before I became a writer, I was a reader. My reader self knows what works and what creates the impact she is looking for. So, I immediately knew where I had to improve with every essay I published, suggested how I could do it, and where I could find my answers.

To finally get my writing ball rolling in the online world, all it took was to be deliberate.

Well, that's it for today. Next time we meet, we'll talk about being slow and steady to have a fun writing life.

Until then, keep writing, my friend.