3 Easy Steps for Becoming a Better Writer

I have been using Notion for writing in college. I will admit I hated the idea of essays and any writing assignment back in high school. I would wait till the last minute to crank anything out. When I started college, 10 years later, it was nearly the same experience. It was not until I took a class that I was truly interested in, but still required you to write about the subject we were learning. Asian American Studies.

The professor didn’t pressure the students much on writing styles, punctuation, or grammatical errors. The point was to express what you learned, in your own words. If you hated the material, then why? If you liked it, then why? It was simple. There was no wrong answer, there was just your opinion. There was no pressure on how I wrote it.

What our professor would do, is give us an outline and a list of articles, videos, and podcasts to research from. We chose the ones we were most interested in, and put our thoughts into words.

It was an easy 100% A+ I got in that class.

What I noticed was how she presented us with a topic, a list of sources, and an easy-to-follow outline. Three things

1. Topic

2. List of sources

3. Outline

There were of course instructions on how much to write, and what points she wanted us to cover. The professor would ask for 300 words, I wrote 1,000. The final Exam Essay was 750 words, I wrote 2,000.

Writing became a part of me. I was never a writer, it just ended up happening, and I give my professor all the credit for awakening this in me. For giving me a repeating set of steps that I was able to practice over and over for 15 weeks of the semester.

When the class was over, I felt the desire to keep writing. I wanted to write. She hyped me up so much and made me feel like I was a good writer, so I believed it. So I took the opportunity to develop and hone this newfound skill.

There are many different writing styles, but I have found this simple 3-step approach to simplify my own writing process.

Choosing a Topic

There’s a million things we can talk about, but it becomes so much easier to focus your writing when you have a chosen topic. It’s even easier when you keep writing about that same topic.

Take Eve Arnold for example, https://medium.com/@eve-arnold, she’s been writing for a few years now, and her main focus is becoming a “Part-Time Creator” while working a 9-5 job. She’s a great writer. The impressive part is seeing her growth while still working every day like the average person. It’s inspiring.

Eve’s focus, writing about growing a business alongside a day job.

Finding a topic narrows down all the information that’s out there. This helps you focus on important details when doing research. You’ll easily start creating a list of sources.

Creating a List of Sources

The great thing about having your topic now is creating a list of sources becomes so much easier.

If you decided to talk about Virtual Reality, for example, you can narrow the tech field down to a segment of relatable information. You might consider Meta, Apple, Oculus, and Unity as keywords.

Now your research will fall between the lines of companies that talk specifically about VR and use those keywords in their article. You can also find videos, or chat rooms that talk about relatable topics like “Ready Player One”, or “Sword Art Online”.

There is a massive fan base around VR, but I don’t feel it is widely talked about yet.

So as you’re going from topic (VR), to subtopics let say VR headsets, to specific fan or audience bases (those chats on RPO and SAO), you can start creating more relevant material for the people you are writing to.

Create a list of those sources, save them on your notes, and reference them as you write. I personally use Notion to manage all my material. Anything I write is on the same page as my list of web bookmarks, podcasts, images, and videos. It’s so easy to stay organized with Notion.

The key thing about this, for productive writing, is limiting your time in the research phase. This is why you want to keep all your notes and sources together to save you hours of time.

During college, we had a week-long to work on our essays. A week sounds reasonable since the professor provided us with all the sources already alongside the topic. But there were several assignments we were given, and other classes with several assignments on top of that. So, I had to learn to limit the amount of time I spent researching and just get to writing the damn thing.

You can’t spend all week just researching. You have to learn just enough material so that you can write a meaningful essay, or for most professional writers, a meaningful blog article.

All you have to do is:

• Find your sources

• Organize them

• Limit research time

Follow those three steps and you’ll do great in pumping out material. Remember, you can always add on to the following article with greater knowledge, building on your previous posts.

Outline Your Writing

Now that you have a topic, you found your sources, and you have amassed tons of material to write about, the final key is your outline.

My favorite thing about this Asian American studies class was the outline my professor provided. It’s like she set me up for success in every one of my assignments. That outline gave my cluttered mind a direction. It kept me from steering so far off-topic, that I would forget what class I was writing for. I have concentration issues at times and find it hard to stay on one topic, so this outline worked like guard rails.

Here was an outline of our Final Project. I copied all the information over to my Notion page.

The written paper consisted of three main points. Each one had its subpoints which helped narrow down what I was to talk about, or the way I was to explain my topic. As I spent some time researching the material we had already covered in class, I simply narrowed in on one idea, and used the outline to flesh out that idea.

I had three weeks to get the project done, but I had it completed in the first week. Her social media project, and the paper. She required a minimum of 2 pages, I gave her 5.

Conclusion

Once again, I did not like writing prior to this class. I was never seen for my writing, and I never had an interest in it. But following these three simple steps allowed me to actually enjoy my time writing. To enjoy expressing my thoughts and opinions.

I found these same three steps of creating a title, listing sources, and outlining in helping me write articles for my own blog. I never in my life wanted to write, but from this class, it has ignited a joy for it. I love writing now.

If you want to write, just find your style of creating, and use it. This is one easy process you can use for yourself.