One guy I like to follow online writes, from time to time, very good articles on how to write like:
From time to time, I suggest other people – “Hey, you should write, too! Start a blog! Just start writing, start from somewhere!”.
And, sometimes, I get this reply “But I can’t write 10x better articles than my competition!”.
This blog post is dedicated to those people.
The best kind of articles is when you come up with something new.
Some people (Derek Sivers, Seth Godin) manage, somehow, to produce a lot of content which is both new and high quality. Never seen before, and top-notch quality.
Let’s say you lack the creativity to write an article. I have this problem, myself. While I try to post mostly unique things on my blog, I’m only proud of a handful of articles on my blog.
What to do, then, if you have nothing to say, but you know that, still, you should flex your muscles and keep trying to write quality articles, all the time, even if most of them are hard to make?
I give you the one, top-notch, incredibly good, ultra, mega, giga, tera, solution! It’s called “research“.
If you have a blog on a certain subject, there are certainly some themes, subjects, which have been analyzed by others. Create original research starting from 5, 10, 20, perhaps even more articles on the matter. Create a huge, mega, giga, tera, article, summarizing all those articles you read about. Give references, of course, but don’t just copy & paste paragraphs, but make your own contribution. Rewrite everything, and give credit where it’s due.
Sure, these articles aren’t the best you can create. But they’re second-best, and you should do this.
In time, by reading and writing a lot of articles like these, you’ll get, I’m pretty sure of it, the ability to write original articles.
So, do “research” (the quotes are a bit of a joke, the research should be real).
