How To Improve At Non-Technical Writing | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | All right, Jesse, I think we have time for a couple more quick calls. Who do we have next?

00:00:03.440 | All right, next question. We have a question about writing non-technical stuff.

00:00:10.160 | Hey, Cal, my name is Abhishek. I've been following your writing since the Google Reader days.

00:00:21.520 | Thanks for all the advice over the years. My question is about getting better at writing.

00:00:26.880 | I've read William Zinser's On Writing Well, and I've read the Elements of Style by Ed Strunk and

00:00:32.640 | White. This has really helped me write better technical documents in my work. I also read

00:00:38.720 | widely. However, I want to write better blog posts and articles that are not as technical.

00:00:44.560 | I want to emulate the writing styles of some of my favorite authors. What is the process I should

00:00:51.600 | follow in learning the way other authors write? How do I learn to reproduce the feeling I get

00:00:57.920 | from reading their work? Do I dissect grammar and composition? Can you recommend a book or

00:01:05.280 | training that goes into this? The author I want to emulate in this case is Bill Bellevue. He

00:01:11.920 | primarily writes about nature, and his writing makes me feel very peaceful and relaxed. I'd

00:01:18.080 | love to be able to write like him. I remember you talking about doing this with your own writing

00:01:23.840 | career. How did you go about it? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

00:01:28.960 | Well, Abhishek, there's two things I'd recommend when it comes to improving nonfiction writing.

00:01:37.680 | One, yes, dissect. Dissect the authors that you want to emulate and try to replicate their formula

00:01:46.400 | in your own writing. Now down the line, this will evolve into your own style, but that is deliberate

00:01:52.160 | practice for style development. As you referenced, I did this back when I was first emerging as a

00:01:59.040 | nonfiction writer. I was trying to understand the then kind of new but quite popular nonfiction

00:02:05.760 | pop science style of idea writing. So I would dissect Malcolm Gladwell. I remember dissecting

00:02:10.880 | Clive Thompson, maybe some Stephen Johnson. But I would take articles, and I would break it down.

00:02:17.840 | And I would figure out like, OK, here are the sections, and then what happens in each section?

00:02:22.160 | You know, opening story with a cliffhanger transition, idea introduction back to opening

00:02:29.840 | story. Like I'd really break these things down. And then I would try to emulate that in articles

00:02:34.080 | I was writing. So great. I am now going to take this style of this article. I broke down the

00:02:39.360 | formula. I'm going to now try to write my own article that follows that formula. That's how

00:02:42.960 | you actually begin to grow those muscles, see what works, see what doesn't work. It's practice

00:02:48.400 | with direction. It's what makes practice deliberate and not just repetitious. You know, who used to do

00:02:55.520 | this famously was Ben Franklin. So when Ben Franklin was learning how to write, he would take

00:03:01.200 | essays or poetry and would break them down to their component parts and then try to replicate it from

00:03:06.720 | scratch. So he really had a mimic style way of learning because he had no other way of learning

00:03:11.680 | how to write. He was apprenticed to his brother's printing shop in Boston and wanted to become a

00:03:18.160 | writer. So he would just literally break down and reconstruct other people's writing. And then he

00:03:21.760 | started writing anonymous letters for his brother's newspaper in the name of characters. His brother

00:03:27.920 | didn't know it was him, but he was at that point able to apply what he learned. And he was a pretty

00:03:32.400 | good mimic. And that's where he really developed his style. So I think it's a really effective

00:03:35.520 | tactic. So I would definitely recommend you do that. The second thing is, if at all possible,

00:03:41.280 | you want to write for editing. There is a difference in the deliberate practice effect

00:03:46.400 | between writing something that someone's going to look at and potentially say, "Nope, that's not

00:03:51.680 | good. We're going to reject it or edit it heavily," versus writing for your own blog or writing your

00:03:57.040 | own journal. And this is what I did. So when I was deconstructing Gladwell, when I was deconstructing

00:04:02.240 | Thompson or Johnson, it wasn't for blog posts. I actually went out and found an online magazine

00:04:10.000 | that had editing, but they needed content. So I was like, "I'm just good enough to get pieces in

00:04:17.040 | here." But they'll reject them if they're not good. And it was like a serious writers, but the

00:04:21.520 | magazine never really took off. It was called Flack Magazine. I think it eventually closed down.

00:04:25.600 | But it had real editors and they were open to submissions. And there was a period of two years

00:04:31.120 | where that was where my writing energy was going. I believe this was primarily between my second

00:04:37.280 | book, How to Become a Straight-A Student, and my third book, How to Become a High School Superstar.

00:04:42.000 | It was between those two periods, which is why superstar actually reads like,

00:04:45.360 | what if Malcolm Gladwell wrote a college admissions book? Because I was doing this

00:04:48.960 | training and I was focused on this magazine, not because they had a big audience, not because

00:04:52.800 | anyone ever saw those articles, but because I was deconstructing writers I admired,

00:04:58.560 | then pitching an article to Flack. And then when they'd accept that pitch, I would write that

00:05:03.120 | article in a direct emulation of a style and article as deconstructing. Because I was writing

00:05:09.280 | for editing, it pushed me harder to make that better. The stakes were higher. And then I'd take

00:05:13.520 | another article and I was like, "Let me try this format." So I pitched an article that allowed me

00:05:16.400 | to practice that format. And then I would practice that format. And that's how I built up my initial

00:05:21.440 | nonfiction idea writing chops. It was through exactly that practice.

00:05:24.880 | So that's my two piece of recommendation. Dissect writers, emulate their style,

00:05:29.200 | if possible, do that emulation for editing so that you have that pressure and feedback to try

00:05:34.640 | to stretch yourself and make that writing as good as possible. And thank you, by the way,

00:05:40.560 | for being such a longtime reader. The Google Reader Days, those are some of my favorite days,

00:05:44.640 | 2007, 2008. It was like the Study Hacks blog and you had your RSS reader. And I liked that day.

00:05:53.520 | This was before social media had taken over the internet. And it was like interesting people with

00:05:57.760 | interesting blogs. And you would curate them in your RSS feed and see their articles that came in.

00:06:03.360 | And I remember back then being big on the minimalist bloggers. This is when Leo Babuda

00:06:10.880 | and Zen Habits. This was before the FIRE movement. But I'm trying to think. There's some other

00:06:14.880 | bloggers like that, people who were doing interesting radical experiments in their life.

00:06:20.080 | And they'd write these essays about it. And it was also personal and interesting and creative.

00:06:24.160 | And I just think there was like a high point, early Web 2.0 was this great high point of web

00:06:28.080 | production. And then five years later, all that got reduced to Facebook posts and Instagram things.

00:06:35.120 | And we kind of lost that moment. So thanks for the memory, Abhishek. I miss and remember that time

00:06:41.600 | fondly.

How To Improve At Non-Technical Writing | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

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