Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

2Writing Is a Habit, Not an Art

We're tempted to think that writing is an art, that only an anointed lucky few can do it well. But that's an excuse—a justification that lets the lazy among us off the hook for being the communication equivalent of a couch potato: flabby, unmotivated, inarticulate. But the truth is that the key to being a better writer is, essentially, to be a more productive one. Or more simply, the key to being a better writer is to write.

You'd think that great writers would have special inspiration or contrived stimuli to boost their output—not unlike what poet, humorist, and educator Taylor Mali hilariously suggested in his deadpan response to a question about his favorite place to write:

I'd love to say I have handmade Japanese paper and a 200-year-old fountain pen…and every morning, after making love, for the third time…I go running, for about five miles…if I'm feeling lazy.

[At] the top of our house, there's an old cupola, and I watch the sunrise up there, in the nude, and I write my poems longhand. I'm right-handed but I force myself to use my left hand, because I find it makes me more creative. And I write, in Latin, because it forces the brain to work in a new way—backwards, like Hebrew…

But, really, Mali adds,

I just sit in front of my computer.¹

Many of the world's most brilliant writers stressed regular routines and schedules for writing. Maya Angelou, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Dickens, and Oliver Sacks kept regular hours to cultivate creative ...