The Best Advice About Writing I've Ever Received

This is a piece of writing advice that I wish I had heard earlier in my career. I hope it helps you as much as it has helped me!

As a writer, you're always learning new things and honing your craft. But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that there are always more lessons to learn—and sometimes you can learn the most from someone who's just starting out.

That's why I want to share with you the best advice about writing that I've ever received:

"Don't try too hard."

I think this is great advice because at first glance, it seems counterintuitive. How can trying less help me become a better writer? Isn't effort good? Well, yes and no. It all depends on what kind of effort you're putting forth.

When I was younger and first started out as a writer, I would spend hours trying to perfect each sentence—just like many other folks do when they're starting out (and even after they've been at it for a while). My problem was that instead of focusing on what mattered most—the content—I was getting stuck on every little detail: word choice, grammar rules, punctuation, even the length of sentences.

I wasted so much time that way. But then one day I had a breakthrough: "It's okay to not be perfect," I said to myself. "You're doing just fine."

And you know what? It's true! In fact, this is the best advice about writing I have ever received. If you're writing something important, your readers are more concerned with understanding your message than nitpicking every detail of your sentence structure or word choice.

When you try too hard, you lose sight of what matters most and end up missing the mark altogether. For example, when I was working on this article, I spent hours trying to find just the right words. Instead of focusing on how well my content communicated my message, though, I got stuck on word choice and sentence structure.

Sure, you want your writing to sound good—but if you're trying too hard, it'll just sound forced instead of natural. Your writing will have no personality and it will come across as genuine or honest because there were no mistakes in it. The best way to avoid this? Be yourself! Write like you talk and speak like you write; that way, both sides of your brain will be happy with what they're doing together and we all know how important communication is when it comes down to getting your point across.

It was the best advice about writing I've ever received which came from my high school teacher who told me: "Don't try so hard!" It was the first time someone had ever said those words to me and it took me awhile to really understand what she meant by them. But now that I do understand what she meant by those words, I can honestly say that they've helped me more than anything else has throughout my time as a writer!

In Conclusion

Advice about writing is everywhere. You can find it in books, on blogs, in articles like this one. It's hard to know what advice to follow and what advice to ignore because there's so much of it.

The best way to write is not to think about writing. You don't need to worry about the little details yet—you'll get there eventually! Just focus on the content itself. What do you want your reader to know? What do you want them to feel? How can you best convey that information in as few words as possible?

That simple piece of advice changed everything for me because it helped me understand how important it is to keep things simple when writing for an audience that isn't familiar with what you're trying to say or do.

So don't try so hard. You'll write better if you let yourself be loose and natural with your words instead of forcing them into being something they're not.

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