💡Why "Write Consistently" is Bad Advice

Hey—It’s Mohammad.

It’s a crisp 8:42pm in the Midwest as I write this. Getting our frost of the season.

But I’m not cold. I gotta bone to pick with the most common writing advice.

Read Time: 3.1 minutes

“Write consistently”

It’s the most common piece of writing advice online.

If you’re looking for any writing advice, that’s the first on you’ll run into. But it’s incomplete. It’s partially true, but we’re missing a ton of nuance that’s critical to actually improving your writing skills.

Everyone writes daily. Just look at the amount of email sent.

But I don’t see 8 billion Shakespeare’s, Stephen King’s, Anne Lemont’s, or Mary Oliver’s out there.

We’re missing part of the equation.

Writing daily is good but it’s not enough.

It’s great advice if you’re a beginner

Beginners need to focus on just writing. Forget about the ego stats of likes, shares, and reposts. Focus on publishing your writing so you build the muscle. Beginners start writing consistently because it’s a basic skill to build like doing body-weight push-ups before weightlifting.

Focus on mastering the basics first.

But it misses nuance of actual improvement.

What the advice of “write consistently” leaves out is that you hit a plateau after 100 published pieces.

Your writing skills don’t improve. You keep repeating the same habits. Keep getting the same results. Improvement has halted.

Now you’re in a writing limbo where 99% of writers quit.

Instead, you must Edit if you want to see improvement.

Writing is nothing without editing.

Writing without editing is like training for a sport but refusing to look at past game footage. Kobe Bryant didn’t become the best through sole focus on training. He reviewed game footage and improved his skills piece by piece.

It’s the same with editing.

Editing is where you sharpen your skills. Build a consistent editing habit. And watch your writing improve.

Here’s a Strategy for Improving your Writing:

Strategy Sections are arranged in 3 steps:

1. The Diagnosis: What’s the root problem?

2. The Compass: How do you overcome unexpected hurdles?

3. The Action Plan: What are the tactics to solve the problem?

The Diagnosis: The problem is that you’ve never written before.

The Compass: Focus on Output.

The Action Plan: Publish & Edit

Publish to a regular cadence. Whatever you can keep up.

But follow an editing plan before you publish like the following:

Stage 1) Edit for Intentions — Are your word choices clear?
Stage 2) Edit for Hooks — Is it engaging for the reader?
Stage 3) Edit for Clarity — Is it clear?

Following any type of editing plan will improve your writing skills.

See you next Saturday— Mohammad

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