3 Tricks to Becoming a Better Writer

One of the hardest things in the world is to sit down and stare at the blank page and then have to start producing and start writing in the same way. Turning on a camera and just staring at the lens and having to start talking can be really hard if you have no idea what it is exactly that you want to say. Now, I believe writing, I believe communicating, I believe these are some of the most valuable skills anybody can develop, because I believe that writing is thinking made physical. It is the best way that I have ever discovered for coming to a deeper understanding, more clarity about what it is you actually think and believe about this world. And so I recommend everybody to become a writer. And when I tell people that, the natural reaction that I get is, yeah, but writing, I’m not a good writer. It’s not for me. I’m not good at that.

And I think a lot of this stems from the fact that school did us no favors when it came to writing. It made it very hard, made it very formulaic and esoteric and focused on all the wrong things around writing to hit a certain word limit, having to use fancy language, to have to structure our thoughts in a very grammatically correct way. And it just all felt so constraining. And that’s not how the brain thinks in a lot of cases. And I understand why school taught us to write that way, as trying to give us a framework, a structure to direct our thoughts. But I think it ended up doing more damage than it did good. And a lot of people walk away from that thinking, I’m just not a good writer. Well, not a lot of people think that they’re a bad thinker.

If you never stop to reflect on this, do you consider yourself a good thinker? Do you consider yourself a bad thinker? Are you above average or below average? I think most people would probably say, I have good thoughts. I have more good thoughts than the average person. And yet, if you can’t articulate those thoughts, if you can’t communicate them through the spoken word or through the written word, then those thoughts, they stay trapped inside of your head, and they can only be impactful to one person’s lives. And so one of the things I like to talk about is that an idea is only as powerful, only as effective as your ability to communicate it. And that’s where writing, that’s where speaking comes in. Now, one of the things that I think can make your writing instantly better. If this is a tract that you would like to pursue, if you’re like, I would like to become a better writer, what do I need to do, Anthony? Teach me. Show me, tell me.

Well, I’m going to share with you three things that you can do to become an instantly better writing that have nothing to do with writing itself. Yeah. How about that? So you have to understand, writing is all about conveying ideas, conveying emotions from one person to another. It is about communicating a belief, a thought, and bridging that between two things. The thing that lends your writing power, that gives it credibility, that gives it persuasive influence, is the energy with which you write it. Sitting down and staring at a blank page is hard because usually it feels so constraining, it feels so stifled. If I was to sit down at this computer right now, if I was to turn around, turn open a word document, stare at that blank page, and just try to write right now, with my current emotional state, it might be very, very difficult to get the words flowing. And so the first thing that you can do to become an instantly better writer is to change your state.
The quickest way to change your state is through your physiology. It’s through your biology. That is your olfactory sense. You could smell something cinnamon or peppermint or a candle that could elicit a different physiological state. It could be doing a physical exercise, going for a sprint, could be doing air squats, could be doing push ups, changing your physiology, getting yourself pumped up right. It could be listening to music and getting yourself hyped or putting yourself into a particular emotional state. One of the things that I like to do when I was writing fiction, in particular, is I would have different soundtracks for different emotions that I was trying to elicit. So if I was trying to elicit an emotional state in that scene that I’m writing something that’s sad or romantic, I might turn on a song that makes me feel those emotions.
Once I feel those emotions, it’s easier for me to find the right words to express those emotions. So this is, number one is never coming at the computer, never coming at the blank page in just a neutral emotional state. Come to it in a very particular, hyped up magnetic state, a state of consciousness that the words will flow in the direction of the emotion that you intend. So that’s number one, and that’s a massive trick right there. Just the words will flow so much easier when you come at it from the right state. Number two is directing your focus with intention and just being intentional about eliciting your hyper focus state. And we do this through a focus ritual. This is very similar to the state management.
For me, that is lighting a candle that is putting on my noise canceling headphones. It is staring at the point of a pen for 30 seconds. This is called tray tac gazing. It’s about, let’s see, turning on my timer to 25 minutes, and then it’s about getting to work, right? So having, like, a process that you go through that helps your body prime as though you’re doing a warm up and says, oh, now it’s time to start working. So we do our state management, then we do our focus ritual, which is to be able to direct that focus with intention. Because no professional athlete, no singer, performer, anybody in the world, they don’t go on the stage without going through a very particular routine that gets them in the right mindset for focus doesn’t prime their focused states. So that’s number two. Number three is to change the narrative inside of your own head about what it is that you’re sitting down to do.
Often we come at an activity when it comes to writing. Feeling one way about the thing almost was a dread, like, I have to do this thing. But it’s so much easier to write when you feel pulled to it. When you feel you have something so important that you need to communicate with the world and you’re in that heightened emotional and physiological state, the words just kind of burst out of you. It’s like when you’re animated about something, whether you’re fired up in a good way or fired up in a bad way, and you’re talking to a friend, and the words just start flowing faster and faster, and you can’t stop them, they just are falling out of you. That’s the state that you want to have when you’re writing. And the way that you do this is by changing the narrative you have around the act of writing itself. Instead of saying, I’m going to sit down and I have to write, and this thing is going to be hard, it’s going to be laborious.

You sit down and you change the narrative that you have about why you’re doing it. The thing that I’m writing about right now is so important because it could change the life of one person reading this, I know it could, because this idea that I’m going to share today, it changed my life. And so my ability to communicate it right now to somebody else that could change their life. And just by changing the story that you tell yourself about why you’re doing the thing or how you’re going to do the thing or how it’s going to feel, can make that activity feel a different way. And so those are just three ideas, three things that help me. When I sit down to do a video like this, or when I sit down to create anything, whether it’s writing or any other creative based activity, I come at it and I say, okay, how do I need to alter my state so I’m in the right frame of mind, so that I’m in the right physiological state? How do I prime my focus state with a focus ritual? And then how do I adopt the most empowering narrative so that this task matters? It’s not just about doing the task, but there’s a deep purpose behind it. What’s the why? So take those three activities or those three mindsets, those three, I don’t even know what you would call these things, but take these three things and in implement them into your creative process and I bet they will have a positive impact. And I hope that they do.

So that’s going to do it for me. Guys and gals, I will catch you on the next episode. But until then, stabber folks, my friends.