Learn To Write : Agava's Approach.

There's a reason why my writing can be read and understood by most people, it's simply because I have read posts that people have written and didn't understand any bit. Why bother writing if you aren't communicating?

Writing isn't a talent, it's something you learn to do. Why? Because at first you learnt to write a letter, so how can writing be a talent? It's like saying reading is a talent. What makes a good writer is approach and mind wealth. If your mind is rich, you write better. Your skills have to be well developed  or you wouldn't get the  message out. You'd be so often misunderstood. 

I have had a hard time calling myself a writer because I don't have a published book. I learnt from Shonda Rhimes on Master Class that there's no such thing as an aspiring writer, there's just a writer. Which is to say a writer is anyone who writes, published or unpublished.  This makes me remember my previous article about the things I have learnt since trying to build my brand. 

See “Six Things I've learnt Since I started Blogging"

I thought of writing this article while writing the aforementioned and immediately had to stop writing that to write this first just to make sure I don't lose the ideas. That's a process I follow that I have found more effective since trying to put articles out on a daily. 

I would put you through my process beginning from how I started and how I'm continually learning. It's short and simple for now since I've only been doing this for two years.

• Start By Reading: This might seem cliche but I promise you'd see something you haven't before as you run through my process.They say readers are writers so you'd have to read a few books,  just a few but be detailed. There's so much you can learn from a single book. I really take my time reading, I'm rarely done with a book and sometimes I go over them again. Reading should be something you do to get ideas as well as enrich your mind. You should focus on the subjects you are interested in as they would be easier to read. You don't necessarily have to read books, you can read blogs too or other online content, I find them easier to read since our society today is mobile friendly, you'd always find time to go through something. 
• Share Your Write Up: Share your write up with a trusted friend. It doesn't have to be something you plan to put out and it shouldn't be the whole work. You should look for a friend who loves to read, they may have gifted you a book before so you'd know. They would help you through it, telling you how mechanical it sounds, mostly it does at the beginning because we rarely bring our personality to our writing. Your mind and story (personality) makes your writing great and distinguishes you from the others. Sometimes they would highlight the obscure ideas because at the beginning we really don't know how to communicate what we are thinking in a way the reader would understand. You have to know that there's a reason why text messages are misinterpreted. They are written words and written words have a tone of their own which is subject to the reader's mind and feelings. 
• Write, Read, Rewrite, Repeat: You can do this over and over again and  the text would constantly change but you have to stop at some point right? When you are satisfied which might be never and if that's the case you may want to look at my article  “Six Things I've learnt Since Trying To Build My Brand” because then you might be dealing with some insecurity issues or are a perfectionist. As with every form of creativity, if you criticize your own work too long or too closely you might begin to doubt its value and never put it up. 
• Beginners Writing Format: Dale Carnegie is someone I have learnt from when trying to write because I read a few of his books. In his book “How To Build Self Confidence and Influence People with Public Speaking” Dale Carnegie suggested this format: State the problem, state the facts, state the solution. That works for public speaking and for writing at least for a beginner until you grow beyond that.
• Idea Development, My Process: I have a funny way of getting my ideas out but I'd save that for the last. You can get ideas by talking to people about the subject. You can also do the usual, research from books or the Internet. Books are better than the Internet because you don't want people to simply search a keyword from your work and see where you copied from. About copying, we all have to copy sometimes but there's a right way to do it. You can always borrow ideas, improve and personalize them, you should see the next step. Finally, I always build my ideas by pretending to be in an interview about the subject. I imagine questions the interviewer would ask and how I'd answer them. I write these questions out and my answers, then use that to develop my write up. Other times I stand before a mirror and pretend to be giving a speech about the subject. I quickly write my ideas down as I finish. 
• More From Dale Carnegie and Others: (Put Your Thoughts Down then research/ The right way to copy): Dale Carnegie and others have suggested: it's always better to think on the subject first,put your ideas down then do your research. The broader the research, the better the outcome as you know much more than you need, to write an educative note or article. You also want to put your ideas down first because your brain becomes lazy when you've seen what others have written, you'd be tempted to merely copy rather than using their ideas to support or buttress your points.