Welcome back to the 1st Law Newsletter - Friday Edition.

In this email:

• Tips to improve your writing

To be a writer is a hard job. Perhaps one of the hardest. Almost everybody must write daily - texts, emails, reports, essays, etc. But still, there are few great writers because writing is muddy. There is no definite way to be better. There is no standard that says, “if your writing is like this, it is good.” No system that everyone can follow to improve. Everyone must discover their own process. If you are interested in becoming a better writer, consider using some of the systems below.

Setting a time limit

Parkinson's Law states that work expands to fill the time it was allotted. Along a similar vein, do not write all day. Nobody can write all day, that is torture.

Write for a set amount of time each day - 5 minutes, 20 minutes, maybe even an hour or two. But once that timer goes off, get up and walk away. Leave what you were writing for tomorrow. It will be waiting for you eagerly.

Rewarding yourself

Importantly, writing must become a habit, and this habit needs to be cultivated. You must encourage yourself to write more. Or at least avoid discouraging yourself from writing.

Reward yourself for successfully completing a writing session. If you set a timer for 1 hour to write and you actually wrote for an hour, have some milk and cookies. Be happy about the experience and come back again the next day.

Also, never talk about what you wrote that day with someone else. Just in case they do not like what you wrote. If you were happy with what you did then someone else tells you they don’t like it, that could be a discouraging experience. Keep the details to yourself. Be happy you wrote and do not let the negativity creep in.

Ideas from The Tim Ferriss Show Ep. 485 with Jerry Seinfeld.

Small tips

Ending mid sentence: Hemmingway would finish his writing sessions in the middle of a sentence so he had somewhere to pick up the next day.

Avoiding filler words: don’t say very. As Mark Twain wrote; “Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

Read more. Both to gather more ideas and to see how others write.

Read this article, it is short and dense with writing wisdom: dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the_day_you_bec.html

Quotes on writing

Thanks for reading!

Lucas