A young girl from Nigeria reached out to me on LinkedIn:

“Please, I would like and appreciate it, if you would help me build my blogging career. I feel so passionate about writing and I would like to go far with it. 

You can visit my blog (https//improvingfortune.com) and see where I am lacking, and if actually am doing the right thing. I will be ever ready to welcome any advice you give to me.”

So I went to her blog and had a quick look. I liked what I saw. But, unfortunately, I didn’t have time to provide a critique. The truth is, I am no expert on blogs or all that goes with it. So while cooking dinner, I wrote a quick response to her on my phone.

“Looks cool. Congratulations on starting the journey. Which blogging is. It is very hard to say what is lacking and what is the right thing. The biggest thing is that you have started. 

The second biggest thing is to be consistent. It is a long-time game. Give yourself at least five years. Learn along the way. 

In five years’ time, you will look back and see how far you have come. I am only two and half years in my journey and I have come a long way.”

She wrote back thanking me for encouragement.

Later at night, I thought I wanted to say so many other things to this young new friend of mine. In two and half years of blogging, I have learned a lot, which I want to share with new starters.

Rather than writing to her privately, I decided to list them here so that other wannabe bloggers might benefit from it too. Of course, I will send my friend the link.

So here we go.

Find your why.

I know it is cliché, but the only thing that will see you through the peaks and troughs of blogging is your why. If your why is not strong enough, if you are testing the waters, or you are doing it because everyone else seems to be doing it, you will be out at the first sign of trouble.

But if your why is that you have to write no matter what — the day you don’t write feels like a day wasted. If your why is that nothing else can fill your soul other than writing and you want to find a way to focus on your writing, then blogging is where you start.

Why blogging?

Because you will learn a lot more when blogging than practicing in isolation.

First, you learn to write for an audience from day one.

Second, you build an audience while learning the craft of writing.

Third, your tackle the fear of ‘publishing.’ For years, I was so afraid to publish anything with my name on it. Writing small blog posts regularly helped me overcome my fear and gave me the courage to write books.

Writing is not the only thing you need to learn.

Learn technology, marketing, and publishing along the way.

In the twenty-first century, you need to be a Jack of all trades and master of one.

You will need to learn how to set up and maintain a blog. You won’t be able to fork out thousands of dollars every time you want to change the layout of your blog or want to include podcasting and video making to it. 

You will also need to learn how email marketing works and how social media is essential to build your profile.

You will also need to learn how the publishing industry works because, sooner or later, you will be publishing books, writing courses, producing audiobooks. That is where the world is going.

Start learning them bit by bit from early on so that you can catch up. Because with technology, everything is changing faster than anyone of us can keep pace with.

Make a learning plan (not an earning plan).

Make a list of all the things you think you need to learn at this point and stick it on the wall where you can see it every day. 

Then pick one by one and learn them. You will be surprised how quickly you will get through the list if you focus on learning one thing at a time.

I tried to learn several at a time and ended up burning out. So now I pick one thing and do it for 100 days and become fluent at it.

Keep it in your mind you are not looking at becoming an expert but just fluent. You are fluent at brushing your teeth, fixing yourself a meal, writing an email, posting a picture on Instagram. You are not an expert at these things but fluent. Jack, not the master.

Be Authentic.

You need to be more authentic on the internet than even in real life. Anything you write will stay on the internet forever. And people can smell bullsh*t from miles.

All the dealings on the internet happen on trust. It is something very hard for new bloggers to grasp. Yes, the shonky deals are out there, and you will be bitten more than once, but people who will be there for the long term will be more genuine and open than even your next-door neighbor.

Being authentic and open doesn’t mean you share everything about yourself and open yourself to be taken advantage of. Being authentic means not putting a persona and presenting to be something you are not. Be your genuine self, even if you have a weird accent, expression, or appearance.

Also, figure out what details of your life are not for public consumption and make a point never to discuss them.

Build connections and help others.

Other than learning skills, your next big thing should be making connections. Because, at some stage in the last two decades, apparently, we have moved from the Information Age to the Connection Age. Today’s economy is called the connection economy.

Build connections will people in your field. Help the ones you can help and seek help from those who can help you. Sometimes just reaching out is all you need to do to make a connection with a stranger. 

Write on other platforms.

Once you get a bit comfortable writing on your blog, find out other platforms you can write on. It is called guest blogging, and several sites publish content from bloggers — Huffington Post, Forbes, HubSpot, Mashable, Entrepreneur — are some to name.

Or you can start writing on a platform like Medium, Vocal, Newsbreak and bring visibility to your work.

Get some experience on your blog first because the early days when no one reads your blog are the golden days. It is time to take risks with your writing, make mistakes and refine your stories.

Learn telling stories from your life and life around you. Wrap your message in your stories. People forget everything else, but they remember stories. Need an example — Once upon a time, a young girl from Nigeria…

There you go, my young friend; I hope I have given you enough to keep you busy for the next five years.

Irving Naxon, the inventor of the crockpot, once revealed the inspiration behind his invention.

His grandmother grew up in a small village in Lithuania. Each Friday, her mother would send her to the local bakery with a pot of uncooked “cholent” to be put in the oven. The pot would sit there for the whole day. While the family observed the Sabbath, the dying fire of the oven would cook the stew. At sundown, she will bring back the pot and the family would have the steamy delicious stew for dinner.

That simple story stayed with Naxon for the rest of his life. He wanted to prepare the same kind stew but in the convenience of his home. He figured out a way to create a heating element that surrounded the pot in the same way it would surround an oven in a bakery. His invention was not only easy to use but also consumed less electricity. And it didn’t cost much. He called his invention ‘Naxon Beanery.’

Naxon Beanery later named the crockpot is central to western cooking. A simple story told by his grandmother led to change the western culinary history forever.

Stories have power to inspire.

Before TV, before internet, before mobile phones, stories used to be the medium to pass knowledge from one generation to another.

Religion, society, culture, families all used stories to teach values, develop character, and provide inspiration.

As human beings, we are automatically drawn to stories because we see ourselves reflected in them. Stories illustrate the point much better than facts or explanations can. Through stories, we share passions, fears, sadness, hardships, and joys. Stories are central to our communication.

We engage with others through stories. Storytelling is a lot more than just a recitation of facts and events. Stories convey meaning and purpose that help us understand ourselves better and find commonality with others.

Stories are all around us.

Every event can become a story. The reason we don’t see the story in everyday happening is because we don’t slow down to draw the lessons from our mishaps or admire the beauty of the opportunities that came our way. In today’s fast-paced environment, there is no time to reflect on our experiences and to build a narrative out of them.

There is the reason why children are so well engaged in storytelling. Kids can’t wait to hear a good story because they’re naturally curious and want to learn more about the world.

For centuries, stories have been used to pass on knowledge, and when important teachings are embedded in a story, we embrace that information uniquely because we tend to remember the underlying emotions in a story rather than the actual elements of that story.

As writers, we struggle to figure out what to write.

We start thinking that our job is to constantly bombard our readers with new information. We tend to forget that people don’t need more information. They don’t need to be taught either. They need to be touched in their hearts. They need stories. Stories of people, places and things.

Well-told stories are a gift from a writer to his readers. Here, is one from story from Sidney Sheldon’t memoir The Otherside of Me:

At the age of seventeen, working as a delivery boy at Afremow’s drugstore in Chicago was the perfect job, because it made it possible for me to steal enough sleeping pills to commit suicide. I was not certain exactly how many pills I would need, so I arbitrarily decided on twenty, and I was careful to pocket only a few at a time so as not to arouse the suspicion of our pharmacist. I had read the whiskey and sleeping pills were a deadly combination, and I intended to mix them, to make sure I would die.

It was Saturday – the Saturday I had been waiting for. My parents would be away for the weekend and my brother Richard was staying at a friend’s. Our apartment would be deserted, so there would be no one there to interfere with my plan.

At six o’clock, the pharmacist called out “Closing time.”

He had no idea how right he was. It was time to close out all the things that were wrong with my life. I knew I wasn’t just me. It was the whole country.

I read this story when I was seventeen years old. It has stayed with me for forty years. I can’t say the same about the articles I read both online and in print.

In today’s world with easy access to high-quality content, people don’t want you to give them more things to think about, more stuff to do, more clutter to fill their minds. There is an ocean of self-help articles. YouTube videos are screaming for attention with headlines such as – “You are missing out if you don’t do this routine.”

In such an environment, if you can tell a simple story in your authentic and honest voice, your writing will have much more impact. It will stay with more people, much longer than the screaming YouTube video or a mile-long self-help listicle.

When someone writes something that doesn’t tell me what to do but instead shares their honest perspective and personal story in an authentic voice they touch me.

They inspire me to become the kind of storyteller Naxon’s grandmother was, whose simple ‘stew-making’ story inspired Naxon to invent a simple device but which had a profound impact on the lives of millions.

Photo by Edgar Castrejon on Unsplash

Last month, I wrote about 3 Habits of a freshman writer (and why you should concentrate on only these) in your first year, where I urged the new writers to focus on developing just three habits:

• daily writing doesn’t matter however, small
• daily reading and
• organizing your writing and notes from reading so you can find them when you need them.

While working on developing these habits, a day will come when you feel that you have wasted the whole day if you had to go to bed without writing something.

You would have a nagging feeling if you did not file away the scribbling you did on the back of an envelope when your diary was not handy or notes you took on a piece of paper while reading the amazing book you accidentally found in the library.

When this starts happening frequently, congratulations. You are now in the sophomore year as a writer and ready to develop three habits of sophomores. They are:

1. daily editing
2. show your work
3. introduce yourself as a writer

1. Daily editing

As a sophomore writer, you will have some writing under your belt. Your job now is to take some bits from it and learn to edit it. To make it ready for human consumption.

Self-editing is as important as writing. You will have to learn to do it. If you have this thought in mind that editing is the job of editors and proofreaders, banish it from your mind. Build a self-editing habit from the early stages, and you will not struggle when you are writing a book.

Tighten your sentences. Remove unnecessary words. Cut out the waffle. Refer to objects by name. Be specific. Avoid adverbs and use more verbs. Choose an active versus passive voice. Include dialogue. Learn how to describe a scene and a setting.

Though much disliked and feared, editing, in fact, is one of the most joyful activities for writers. This is where you learn and practice the craft of writing.

And the craft is in making our writing meaningful. As a writer, our job is to observe, decipher the meaning and articulate in such a way that the message becomes universal. It might take us a lifetime to learn how to do that, but when we do, we will leave behind something that will last much longer than us.

2. Share your work

Once you have a few pieces of work ready, it is time to find appropriate writing groups. Writing groups are the best way to get some objective feedback to improve your work.

It is also the least threatening way to get a critique of your work. It could be very intimidating for new writers to get their work critiqued. Writing groups provide encouragement and help and aren’t afraid to pick things apart when they need to be. I have been a part of various writing groups for two decades now and have benefited immensely from them.

How do you find a writing group?

Usually, there are some already in your city or town. Sometimes, when you attend a writing course, participants agree to continue meeting after the course and form a writing group. There are some online writing groups also available. One I know of is Ninja Writers, run by Shaunta Grimes.

If nothing works, form your own group by giving an ad at your local writer’s center.

3. Introduce yourself as a writer

The time has come to call yourself a writer. You don’t have to publish a book to be a writer.

The fact that you’re actively and consistently writing and sharing your work with others is all the proof you need to take up the title of ‘writer’ and start proclaiming your writerhood to the world

So what are you waiting for? Go own your status!

Tell the world. Actively seek opportunities to tell people.

The best way to do that is to have an elevator pitch ready. An elevator pitch is a short, pre-prepared statement you use to introduce yourself. It needs to be short, punchy and should finish before the finish of the elevator ride.

You don’t want to feel embarrassed or hesitant in admitting to someone that you are a writer. A handy, ready-made well-practiced statement can do wonders for your confidence level.

So when someone asks you what do you do, rather than fumbling for words, you can automatically say, “I am a writer, I write…”

Try using this statement even when you are not a full-time writer. Try it on strangers first then move on to friends.

The idea is to make your subconscious mind believe it.

Be ready for the next question, “What do you write?”

Incorporate it in your elevator statement. Keep it sweet and simple. In most cases, the person you’re talking to isn’t expecting a seamless three-paragraph book blurb. They’re simply curious about what you write.

There you have it, the three habits of a sophomore writer.

A sophomore writer writes daily, reads daily, edits daily.

They organize their work and notes so that they can find it when they need it. They show their work to others and get critique to improve their writing. Most importantly, they introduce themselves as writers without hesitation.

Photo by Joshua Ness on Unsplash

We are constantly living our lives in the fast lane. There is so much happening around us all that time that we have practically gone numb. We don’t feel anything, we don’t notice much. We are going through life just like those bullet trains that whoosh by at the speed of two hundred and fifty miles per hour and where the outside scenery keeps changing every minute.

We apply the same approach to writing as well. We want to write quickly. We want to build a portfolio of articles in a matter of months, finish a book in a year, do revisions hastily and publish as soon as possible.

We measure our output by the number of words at the end of the day rather than the insights they carry. We are beginning to think that writing is the same thing as typing.

Good writing takes time.

Just recently I came across the concept of slow writing through Louise De Salvo’s book The Art of Slow Writing. Louise makes the case that mature writing often develops over a longer period of time. Deep immersion in the process of writing yields results that might are not possible with quick writing we have become so accustomed to. If we want our work to get stronger, more nuanced and more compelling we need to practice the process of slow writing.

Slowing down allows us to explore the complexities of the craft. Lousie gives an example in her book, “Virginia Woolf penned roughly 535 words and crossed out 73 of them, netting her 462 words for her day’s work. Let’s say she worked for three hours. That’s about 178 words an hour including the words she deleted—and Woolf was writing at the height of her creative powers.”

She explains, to explore our creativity we need to slow down. We need to give ourselves the opportunity to get to a deeper level by getting to know ourselves and our stories fully over a longer period of time.

Louise goes on to say:

“Trying to work too quickly, trying to work in too polished a way too quickly, expecting clarity too soon, can set us up for failure.”

[…]

“Slow writing is a meditative act: slowing down to understand our relationship to our writing, slowing down to determine our authentic subjects, slowing down to write complex works, slowing down to study our literary antecedents.”

[…]

“Getting completely lost, coming unstrung and unbound, arriving at unknown and unexpected places, is, for me, a critical part of writing.”

Louise DeSalvo, The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections on Time, Craft, and Creativity

In the age of the internet, where we are continually under pressure to produce more content, strive to meet daily writing quota, write to deadlines and give preference to quantity over quality, Louise’s book is a sigh of relief.

Intrigued by the concept I went digging and found that slow writing is being used quite effectively in schools. The children are encouraged to slow down while writing, cut out the waffle and focus on every single word or sentence that they construct.

What is slow writing in schools?

In schools, slow writing is used as an approach to writing that uses a step-by-step structure to create a short text or paragraph. A teacher will give specific writing prompts or instructions as to what grammar, language or punctuation features to include in each sentence.

David Dadau has a lot of resources on the topic.

For adult writers, the concept of slow writing is wider than that. It refers to actually slowing down in life and making time to think, meditate and daydream. According to Louise De Salvo, “The most productive writers and creative people I know realize that dreaming and daydreaming are important parts of how writers work.”

Is there a way to slow down in our lives?

Apparently there is.

When a train is traveling at two hundred and fifty miles per hour if you look inside, the things are at a normal pace – a man reading a newspaper, a woman tending to her child, teenagers stealing a look at each other.

Franz Kafka said: “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked…”

When we begin a new project, our ideas are in their infancy. They need to be researched. They need to mature. That takes time. As we learn and understand new information, and let it percolate over days and weeks at length, it makes unique connections with the information we already have in our heads. That is when we discover new insights.

It is the gestation process to become a writer. During this, we learn about ourselves as writers. We establish our work’s foundation. We permit ourselves to play and explore. We commit—or recommit—to working steadily and purposefully.

But no matter how fast the world zips along, if you want to write you need some silence and space, time to slow down to figure out what you think and feel.

Here’s what you can do to practice slow writing:

Schedule a time when you can sit still. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Anything. Keep a notebook handy. Let the thoughts cross your mind and try catching one that intrigues you. Write it down. Keep writing as long as it is there. Stop when your mind moves on to the next one.

For the next month, stick with that thought. Research it. Meditate on it. Look for examples to illustrate it. Find analogies to explain it. See what other people have written about it. Find out books on it and read them. By the end of the month, you will have enough material to write an elaborate article on it. But most importantly your mind will grow and develop insights. A simple thought that appeared randomly while sitting still has now become a fully formed insight. That is what you aim for when you practice slow writing.

Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash