10 Tips for New Authors and Writers

 

I was never good at writing, and maybe I’m still not. I am a work in progress!

But still, I have somehow managed to write more than 200 technical articles, blog posts, and personal blogs on the following websites and platforms:

Authored 2 Books:

Contributed on 2 more books:

And now writing a few more books.. the journey continues…

Over these years I have faced a lot of challenges and hurdles, many times I was demotivated and didn’t want to write a single word, more than that I learned some good lessons! So, today I want to share some of these tips and pointers with you guys and I think it would be great to document these for aspiring writers and new authors, hoping that it will give them little hope and a fresh perspective whenever faced with a dead-end.

Here are the tips:

  1. Never Good Enough

    When writing a book, deep-dive, or article, I would suggest to keep your expectations a little low and don’t aim for a perfectly written chapter/piece on the first sitting. Because it will never happen and you will gradually lose motivation. Lower the expectations and keep pushing that content, it will be never good enough and there will always be areas of improvement. Moreover, human attention span and cognitive abilities are limited, and focusing too much on Quality when you start your piece is a waste of time and you will highly likely end up losing interest or will be distracted at the end.

  2. Brain Dumps

    Start by dumping all your ideas in the form of crappy a few pages every day. They don’t have to be good and it’s totally fine writing a few pages of subpar standards when the piece is still in draft.  It can be loosely written paragraphs, hyperlinks, headings, pointers, few incoherent sentences. IT DOESN’T MATTER!  So do not focus on quality in the beginning and just write religiously because once they are on your screen/paper, then it is way easy to reconstruct, refine, and form your ideas.

  3. Iteration is the Key

    It’s OK to take a second..third..fourth look at your work and make it better each time. Revision is the key because you will not be in the perfect state of mind all the time and you are learning and growing each and every day. So a quick read-through of your work, a few days or a week later may highlight weak sections that can be improved upon. On top of that maybe now you have better insights and understanding on the topic, so now you can also add newly attained knowledge to your work.

  4. Avoid Tunnel Vision

    When you are researching or writing on a topic for quite long you will tend to go into a tunnel vision, which is good but often hides a lot of mistakes and different perspectives in plain sight.
    Learn to break this pattern and come back to your work with a fresh set of eyes, mental state, and energy and it will definitely improve!

  5. Embrace Criticism

    It is OK to write something imperfect & be criticized for it. In-fact think of it like you are crowd-sourcing your content to a larger audience that will help you improve the quality and at some point, you have to learn to don’t take it personally. It is for the better good.

    Embrace it and you will learn and grow! You will definitely make mistakes and you can always improve on that. In my opinion, it is better to be criticized for a work that is published, rather than sitting in your comfort zone, with work and no criticism at all! Remember little action is better than no action!

    On a positive note, when I started blogging and writing a lot of people who criticized my work 5 years ago are now my good friends, some have co-authored books with me and few of us talk on a regular basis! You never know what will happen 😉 so stick to it! Don’t let criticism make you think of yourself any less. It is not easy to get pointed on a public platform, but trust me no one remembers the typo mistake or wrong assumption you made in the long term.

  6. Research, Find Patterns, Observe other Authors

    If you are just stuck staring at your screen, and you don’t know where to begin then you can always do a little research on Google and read a few articles on the topic. This will help you identify the patterns other Authors utilize and you can apply some of that in your work as well, but please don’t copy someone’s work! Experienced authors know how to introduce a topic, how to share ideas and effectively summarize learnings in a few lines you should look at their work as a student and learn from it!

    Start by making an outline of the chapter/article, like heading and subheadings that will help you to structure your ideas, and you can later research each of the pointers and add content under them. Outlining introduces a lot of momentum to your writing as the work evolves on your screen/paper, better than staring at a blank screen and not knowing what to do. This works for me and I’m sure it will work for you!

  7. Make Notes

    Keep a notebook app handy and document all your ideas, because hundreds of ideas come and leave your mind all day and all the time. Especially during a leisurely walk or shower thoughts, but that doesn’t mean to carry your phone to the shower 😀

    It is highly likely you will forget these topics/ideas before you will even sit to write anything. So it always a good idea to scribble them on a paper of using a digital notebook like OneNote, Evernote etc. Trust me we are not as smart as we think we are, and having these notes in one place and referring them at a later stage gives you that competitive edge over others and saves a LOT OF TIME AND HEADSPACE in re-researching and thinking.

  8. Draft-Rephrase-Refine-Repeat

    I am sure anything good we read online is a product of multiple iterations of refining, rephrasing, and countless hours of research. So keep your expectations low and don’t expect a masterpiece in your ‘first-draft’. You can ask your roommate or spouse to read it for you and find mistakes, suggest corrections and then you can work upon them to create a better version of your work!

  9. Never Compare.

    It is very important to not compare your initial drafts or writing skills with a published piece from another experienced author. You will only make it difficult for you by demotivating yourself and on another hand, you have no idea of the countless hours he/she spent perfecting their work.

    So respect that and continue your writing, refining in cycles. Understand that: You can’t just one fine day become a good writer, but instead, you become a good writer by writing and writing more and more! Repetitions. 10,000 hours rule! Do your work and results will follow.

  10. Finish. Then Perfect!

    Don’t fall in the perfection trap in the beginning, instead focus on producing more work and finishing each and every one of them. Finishing the first draft of the chapter(s) or the complete book is more important and a bigger milestone than having just a few PERFECT chapters.

    Be a ‘Finisher’ first then become a Perfectionist! Perfection is something that should be on your mind once everything is on the table, otherwise, there is no point in perfecting a piece that will never see the light of the day.

  11. Technology to Rescue (BONUS TIP!)

    We, humans, are limited by our abilities when it comes to what all we can remember, the speed of learning and things we can perform, so following are some tools that will help you fill gaps

    • Digital Notebook Apps
    • Witing Assistants and Grammar correction
    • Mind-mapping tools
    • URL capturing tools and extractors – This can come very handy when you are doing a ton of research and you have like 50 “Important” tabs open 😀 in your browser. Capture all URLs and go to sleep.
    • Speech to text
    • Designing – Logos, creating GIFs featured images, book covers, etc
    • Screen capturing tools
      • SnagIT – Very easy to capture desktop images and videos
    • Markdown to PDF or HTML Converters

Let me know if these pointers were useful for you and share with your friends and colleagues who want to start writing in some form or another.

Please don’t forget to give a shout out, suggestions, and feedback on my twitter handle @singhprateik , I would love to hear from you!

Until then… signing off…

Optical Character Recognition
~ Author of “PowerShell Guide to Python“,  and currently writing a Book on “Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)“

All my books are available as a discounted bundle:

    1. PowerShell Guide to Python : This PowerShell Scripting guide to Python is designed to make readers familiar with syntax, semantics and core concepts of Python language, in an approach that readers can totally relate with the concepts of PowerShell already in their arsenal, to learn Python fast and effectively, such that it sticks with readers for longer time.
    2. Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) : Keywords, definitions, and problems WSL solve and how it works under the hoods. From download to setup to interoperability this book even covers details like the architecture of Windows subsystem for Linux and new features in WSL 2 with some wonderful use cases.

 

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