Write daily to improve your writing

If you want to eventually run a marathon, you must run daily. If you want to be ready for any kind of activity, you have to train your body and mind to it by frequent practice.

In Outliers, a wonderful book about what it means to excel, with speculations on what it takes, author Malcolm Gladwell points out that real mastery–whether of swimming, hockey, the violin, or rock music–takes about 10,000 hours of practice.

Now, you may not have that level of mastery in mind for your writing. And you really don’t have to have it, to write a good book. But the more you write, the easier it gets.

If you’re worried about your grammar or sentence structure–don’t. Today’s email- and SMS-trained readers are looking for content, not perfectly constructed sentences. They want authenticity; they want to hear the real you, “speaking” in your true voice. (If your spelling and grammar are truly atrocious, get help. Take a course or find a virtual assistant who can write for you.)

Of course, “true voice” is something to which serious writers aspire, and it can be elusive. Don’t obsess over that either. Just write. Daily.

My cousin is a runner. She’s 58, and feels incomplete if she doesn’t run daily. Running is not only easy for her; it scratches deep itches.

I feel that way about writing. When I don’t write, I feel as if something is wrong, as if I am not fully expressed. Not everything I write is wonderful, but I can do enough of it, easily, so that I can find good stuff in it.

That’s the facility I want you to have with writing. When the prospect of writing a blog post, a book subchapter, or a sales letter does not fill you with dread, but rather gives you anticipatory tingles.

Part of my method for writing books is ZipWriting; reading about how to do it may help you. It’s in the free book you can get here.