If you become a listener, I guarantee you will become a better writer by simply becoming more aware of your surroundings.

Writing is only 10% execution. The rest of it is strategy. And one big part of writing strategy is listening. Too many writers are focused on the wrong things.

When I started, I spent a lot of time looking at what other writers did. I looked at their websites, social media, and the stuff they wrote about. If I wasn’t doing that, I was probably looking at my stats.

As if looking at the number of weekly new subscribers will make it grow faster. If that was the case, I would have 100 million subscribers now. It’s a waste of your time. And if you keep wasting your time like that, who says you’re not wasting the reader’s time?

Do find writing new articles hard? Contrary to what most people think, it actually is hard.

Over the past five years, I’ve written nearly 400 articles and reached millions of readers. While some articles got more views than others, that’s not the way I measure myself. 

I look at engagement: How many readers take the time to share, comment, or even email you their thoughts about the article? That’s how I know my article and topic made a real impact. 

Here are 10 writing rules I always apply to do that.

The first lesson I had to learn as a serious writer is that inspiration isn’t something you wait for. I always assumed that writers got their new article ideas from some mystical force of nature.

I imagined Hemingway sitting in a dark cafe in Paris. I thought of Bukowski who was drunk half of the time. It seemed like those writers got their inspiration from traveling, drinking, or whatever you think generates inspiration.

We’ve all stared at our word processor, waiting for inspiration to strike and finally get us typing. But my experience taught me it’s a foolish strategy. It’s a waste of time to start writing an article or book from a blank canvas. 

Instead, I always make sure I have something to say, which makes writing easier. In this article, I explain my complete process for coming up with new ideas for articles. I’ve used this process more than 400 times and counting. 

There are many reasons every person should learn how to write clearly. But two things dwarf every other reason. Namely, credibility and time.

Both these aspects are critical to our careers. Without credibility, it’s impossible to build the trust required for a long-term career. And if your writing is confusing, you’ll waste a lot of time trying to clear things up.

These two reasons might sound obvious, but even successful people commit the mistake of unclear writing. And they paid a high price for it. I believe we don’t stress the importance of clear, credible, and persuasive writing enough, which leads to all these confusing and lifeless written works around us.

To fix that, we need to become aware of the importance of clear writing. Here are two examples.