Morning all,
Happy Sunday!
To those of you who read this on a Sunday anyway.
I was thinking about the subject of writing having just hit #1 in ‘Hot New Releases’ on Amazon under ‘home based business sales:
And it got me onto this subject of considering – what is the difference between a good writer and a bad writer.
When you think about this as a subject there might be all sorts of things running through your mind as to ‘writing style, genre, audience size’ and all manner of things.
I wanted to make an alternative consideration though – and talk about a couple of things:
The first is what has led me to put a book out on Amazon –
Table of Contents
Being Massively Consistent
What led me to this is consistency and nothing more.
Every day pretty much since Jan 1st I’ve been writing.
Nothing is really ranking on Google at this point. My readership found via Google is absolutely tiny – but then there are other rewards that come from producing content consistently.
And that’s growing my presence on Amazon.
And then getting onto the bestseller list.
You invite serendipity into your life when you are simply consistent.
Consistency when it comes to writing brings many many other benefits.
Let’s run through them – and these benefits have largely been accidental.
#1 Revamping the Deepak Shukla website – I removed 30-40 irrelevant blogs and put them onto the Pearl Lemon and Pearl Lemon Leads website (very relevant for them less for me)
This helps both sites as none of that writing was actually written by me – but was by our Head of Content Melanie.
Pearl Lemon and Pearl Lemon Leads will then both benefit from having more content.
Furthermore, Deepak Shukla benefits from having less irrelevant content on the website.
#2 We redirected the main SEO, Lead Generation, Heatmap and other pages from Deepak Shukla. These pages were where all of the links have been built to.
Again the same principle as above – Pearl Lemon benefits from getting all of this additional link value being directed towards it.
#3 Deepak Shukla will soon have the SEO content on the homepage removed also so that it becomes completely NON-SEO focussed
This is to the benefit of the wider entrepreneurial audience I’m more interested in as opposed to just SEOs – and in truth, the website never converted into solid enquiries anyway because it was a mixed website with personal content as well.
#4 We’re repurposing the content for Medium as well as LinkedIn so that I can also passively grow on those channels as well
#5 We’ve decided to also repurpose some of my content to turn it into a series on Amazon with two books pretty much already finished but with many more to come.
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Do you see what the power of consistently writing has done for me?
How many changes have happened since Jan 1st when I started this journey.
Consistency leads to focus. And when you focus you wish to continually keep improving.
And these aren’t the ONLY improvements.
There are several others which I’ll walk through with you now as well:
#6 Come January 12th I realised I wasn’t doing ANY keyword research when I was writing my content. And from that moment I managed to combine a way of searching for a topic I was interested in writing about on Ahrefs and then putting together a blog around it
#7 We hired a full-time internal SEO person to work on all of our internal projects to help drive them all further forward
#8 Come April 15th I realised I could look at top-performing blogs and identify the content they were writing about that had masses of traffic. So I’ve tweaked my content strategy again and am looking at high performing keywords to see if that will grow my site much faster
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That’s everything I can think of that’s come as a consequence of writing on a daily basis.
And there are many many more people out there that have been writing every day for much much longer than I have. There are folks out there that have been doing it for years.
And there are many many many more who are currently in the same void that I am – where you’re going through the dip.
You’ve put in masses of hard work but you’re not reaping the benefits of your work. At this point in time – as my team keep reminding me – I must keep going, I must keep innovating and I MUST keep pushing.
I would say that every good writer worth his/her salt has crossed the inconsistency void.
This is a simple but great separator of writers.
Oh, you want to be a good writer?
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Be consistent and write every single day in a row for one year – and then come back to me and let’s see
- What you’ve accomplished purposefully, as well as accidentally
- Then let’s talk about the next steps
Most writers – 99.9% of them – will never cross this void. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve never crossed this void either.
Jan 1st way my day 1 and I’m in the middle of the void at the moment – just silently slogging away with all other writers.
Come join me in the void in my path to become a great writer by first mastering the simple act of consistency.
To even be made aware of the table where all the professionals sit I think that cross the 1-year void is a rite of passage.
Intentional Practice
This is the second element of consistency – that you need to also be intentional with the way that you write.
Some people see this void and this journey of solely being about the mindless act of writing.
But that will not get you anywhere.
Writing also has several supporting pillars that you must engage in to become a good writer.
And this is to write with intention.
What is the intention exactly?
The intention is progress.
Progress can take many forms and shapes.
It can be – trying to expand your reading audience, submitting your writing to competitions, sharing it with loved ones, getting critical feedback….
Whilst you may write with the ‘door closed’ to take from Stephen King. You must then push with the door open.
Seeking to continuously progress and improve and shorten the journey of the void before you find recognition (or recognition finds you).
I want to give you a simple analogy to help demonstrate what I mean.
Any one person can go on 10 dates.
And let’s say those dinner dates you go on – get met with varying levels of success. 4 of them go well, 6 of them do not for one reason or another.
Your goal is to have the person you date wish to see you again.
Most people – on this journey will learn incidentally, via on-the-job experience.
E.g if 3 of those dates comment on your bad breath then you’re likely to go ahead and fix your bad breath.
But what happens if you DON’T get those comments? You’re unlikely to notice it right? Because you didn’t in the first place.
However, if you actively ask all 10 dates for feedback – you’re likely to get a rich body of data about what you could change.
Some of it will be minor, others will be major. Some will be very easy to change, others points might be challenging – some you won’t bother with.
However – you will see a net improvement from just getting access to this data.
Now, what if you combine this feedback loop with running your own analysis?
What if you sit and review the events of each 10 dates and identify areas both micro (forgetting to hold open a door fully as you walked into a venue) and major (turning up 25 minutes late to date) to work upon.
If you combine asking for feedback with running your own analysis you’ll make significant strides yes?
Now let’s assume you have a dating coach who sits in the same restaurant you take dates to, is able to listen in on the conversation and then break down each date with a series of detailed insights.
Continual Learning
Not only that, but you combine all of this with your own independent study to learn more about dating and romance conceptually.
You read eBooks, watch videos, go through countless blogs, and between dates you practice lots of small things.
You strike up conversations with strangers, you adapt your texting routine, you study your expressions in a mirror, work on your smile, your stride, your poise.
You research body language, mimicry, pheromones, running routines.
And with enough practice and game time, you start to meld all of these elements into your natural style.
What will that do to your dating game?
It’s only logical you’ll see significant improvements yes?
Do you see what I’m saying here?
The End Test
Now – if you were to go out and have another 10 dates – using your newfound learning and skills – what level of improvement would that have upon your dating ability.
How many second dates would that result in?
Writing is much the same.
Now that I’ve seen all of those changes and all of those improvements – and I have a base to work from – it’s logical I’ll get much greater results from these upcoming 12-weeks as compared to the 12-weeks before it.
So if I combine massive consistency with intentional practice – I can levy HUGE results.
A Word About Bad Writers
So what, with this in mind makes a BAD writer?
It’s pretty simple in effect I hope you see now….
It’s NOT their style, or their grammar or their subject matter or word choice or their pen, or any of their tools.
It’s their work ethos, and desire to continuously improve that will dictate all their success that may or may not follow.
If you DON’T give up, DON’T quit, DON’T wallow, DON’T mindlessly do the same thing every day and expect a different outcome – you can get on your journey of becoming a good writer.
I know the pain because I’m now into my 3rd year of trying to really have a go at becoming a writer (although I’ve casually tried on and off for maybe 7 years)…
And only feel since Jan 1st I JUST started to take this journey seriously.
That just goes to show HOW long the road is to become a good writer.
Which is why my friend, there are so few of them.
Let’s journey together!
