Transforming your Writing – A Self-Taught Approach

Developing effective writing skills is a critical aspect of personal and professional growth, alongside other fundamental skills such as reading and time management. In various stages of our careers, we are often required to craft compelling written content, such as in job applications, scholarship essays, professional/follow-up emails, LinkedIn posts, blog articles, persuasive essays, etc. to influence the opinions of others. Therefore, refining our writing abilities is essential in order to present ourselves in the most impactful manner possible and achieve our goals.

My background:

I was born and brought up in India, and I moved to the United States when I was 14. Although I possessed a solid foundation in grammar, I had limited exposure to advanced reading and formal writing, including essay composition. After relocating, I faced consistent challenges competing with peers who had been cultivating and utilizing these skills for an extended duration. My journey started when I was placed in ELL (English Language Learner) courses and denied enrollment in Honors level English and History classes. However, it culminated when my Counselor responded to me in an email, "Wow. Just wow. This is the best college application essay I have read in a really long time." Undoubtedly, that compliment motivated me to persist in refining my writing abilities, but it also allowed me to allocate my efforts towards other essential skills with newfound confidence.

I am no expert in writing, nor am I claiming to be. In fact, a significant driving force behind creating this blog was to further enhance my writing skills through a unique and unfamiliar approach so that I can continue improving my skills. Nonetheless, I believe that the progress I have made towards attaining my current writing proficiency involved overcoming numerous learning curves with limited external guidance, and it certainly wasn't easy. With this blog post, I aspire to be the source of external assistance that I had yearned for at that time!

My inspiration:

First, I would like to direct all of you to Scott Adam's article "The Day You became a Better Writer" that has been a major inspiration for me while writing any of my blog articles. He goes over some of the most basic and overlooked tips that can give your write-ups a touch of professionalism, confidence, and, most importantly, you. I would highly recommend reading this article after my blog if you would like to go more in-depth about honing your writing skills.

Link: https://sorfis.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Writing-Tips-Scott-Adams-DFW-Sowin-compilation-Zweig.pdf

What to prioritize while writing – Prepping your mindset

Mindset often changes your perspective, intentions, as well as voice when it comes to writing. I usually start by either making a mental note or a physical list of the following points:

• My goal is not to be perfect but impactful – What is my point of this write-up?
• Who is my target audience?
• What are emotions do I want to highlight throughout my write-up?
• What is the tone of my writing?
• What should be my structure? How can I make it more or less dramatic?
• This is for me. Whatever I write, my only priority is to seek internal validation and not external.

Definite steps one can take to improve their writing

Step 0 - Create a Draft for your particular prompt

As much as I hate this step, you need to start by simply dumping all your thoughts on a document, judgement free. This will help you get your brain juices flowing. One of the biggest mistakes I have made in the past is wanting my first draft to be the perfect draft. This approach is simply lazy, lame, and unproductive. You need to first craft and understand your thought process to be able to best present your findings. This step is also important to figure out a structure for your write-up. It can be done in a format that best suits how you are thinking. I typically use bullet points because succinct sentences are not something that come easy to me. You can also use images, or write intro paragraphs, if that works best for you. After you have your thoughts down, put it into a presentable format. If you're writing an article, write it in the format of an article, and so on. Remember that this process is more about you learning how you write best, instead of producing the best write-up ever; perfection is not the goal here.

Tip #1 - Start by complicating every simple statement – Improving your vocabulary

This step is especially important to build your vocabulary. One cannot build upon their vocabulary by simply making a list of all the new words they learnt – they need to apply what they have learnt and reuse it. Upon completing Step 0, your goal should now be to complicate your sentences, structures, etc. as much as possible. Trust the process – this step is still not perfect. You can complicate your sentences in many different ways:

• Identify weak words and change them with bigger words that fit the tone of your writing
• Are you using the same words over and over again? How can you change that?
• Look for redundancies in words and sentence patterns. No two words or sentences should sound the same unless you intend them to.
• Re-evaluate the structure of every sentence. Do you want to make it passive or active? What goes best with the intent/intended tone of your write-up?
• Can two sentences be combined? Can a sentence be shortened?

This is arguably the longest and most crucial step that I will be describing in this article. Be sure to spend a good amount of time complicating things because it would help with the following steps. The goal of this step is to really prioritize your intention and emotions.

Tip #2 - Master the grammar

No one is going to take you seriously if you present broken grammar, no matter what language you are writing in. There is no other way to put it. A good metric to maybe go off of is, funnily enough, the English section of ACT. I don't agree with standardized testing materials, but I have found the English section from ACT to be particularly helpful. It is something that I have seen most people struggling with when trying to improve their writing. Some ways to do so are:

• Taking practice exams of the English section
• Looking up videos on Youtube for grammar

This tip will help you focus on consistency in tenses, the flow of your sentences, your word choices, etc. as well. Get creative with it. This is one of those skills that can only help you in the future, whether it be writing or even persuading people during a conversation.

Tip #3 - Making the most of your word limit

If you are anything like me, you are obsessed with optimization. I obsess over optimizing my time, optimizing the distance I travel, etc. When I'm writing any piece, I try to optimize the word limit – how can I best express myself in the given word limit. This is especially helpful in instances such as LinkedIn Connect requests. More often than not, you want to capture a recruiter's attention in mere 300 characters. This is where one needs to prioritize the choice of words according to their impact, making my intentions clear, not using filler words, etc. I have often found that bigger, more sophisticated words help you reduce the total number of words you have to use.

Tip #4: So what?

I have tried to make it a habit to consistently ask myself "So what?" after each and every sentence. A lot of the times we end up saying the same thing over and over again in different words. I usually do this when I have too many emotions that I want to portray but not a succinct intention behind those emotions. This is why I like to take the question "so what?" and put myself in my reader's shoes. Is is really going to impact them the way I want them to be impacted? Or is this going to be underwhelming? Or would it seem over the top? There is a big difference between stating something and describing something, and I believe that asking yourself this question will help you describe more than state your opinions, thoughts, emotions, etc. Shifting my focus from the task itself to the impact of the task was one of the biggest turning points in my writing journey.

However, it is important to maintain a balance between describing something and still being mindful of your intentions. This brings me to my last tip.

Tip #5 - Simplify the complicated

This is the last step of writing. At this point in time, we have thought over our intentions enough, we have complicated our sentences enough, we have tried to describe everything enough, and we have tried to optimize our word limit enough. Now, you probably have something that might be too complicated for your audience. When I started exercising the aforementioned steps, this was the biggest criticism I got from my peers and teachers. The solution to this is not to abandon the steps mentioned earlier, but to try and simplify more.

Everything needs a balance. Every step leading up to this one was important to truly showcase emotions and intentions behind your writing. This step will help you finalize everything in a way that is presentable. From a chef's point of view, this is the step where you finally pick and choose exactly what to present so that your audience is able to best understand you. One of the best ways to do so is reading out loud. I truly did not understand the criticism I got from my peers and mentors until I started reading out loud. This is the time to ask yourself the following questions:

• Are my transitions working?
• Is everything flowing smoothly?
• Are there any gaps?
• Are the words too complicated for my target audience?
• Are the words too descriptive/not descriptive enough?

Feel free to constantly ask your mentors for feedback on what you have written as well. They will also have helpful advice on how you can improve because they would have a completely different perspective that yours.

All in all, writing requires a ton of patience to improve and hone in, like any other skill you would like to pick up. The key is to consistently apply the skill and change your framework to what suits you the best. This blog article was my attempt at presenting what worked best for me. But my experiences and skill level going into this process are much different that yours. Be sure to experiment around before choosing one framework. Change is an important step for growth!

Thanks for reading!