Want to Become a Better Writer? Learn From These 8 Great Writers!
My favorite writers and authors
Stephen King once famously said:
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: Read a lot and write a lot.
So true, right?
If you look at my old Medium stories you would laugh at me. Why? Let alone writing well, I didn’t even know how to put the right words into the right place. I was a total disaster.
So how did I improve my writing? I wrote a lot.
When I started my online writing journey in 2022, all I did was just write, write, write, and write. Because I knew I was terrible at writing and needed to fix it — and the only thing that could fix it was — writing a lot.
After a few months of writing, I realized I was absolutely missing one more component to becoming a better writer: reading a lot.
As I was obsessed with writing, I realized that I should also buy books. So guess what, I started buying best-selling books, not because the books are best-selling but because they’re best-selling so they must be well written.
That was my thought process. So I ended up buying 30–40 books on different topics like writing, money, self-improvement, finance, etc.
And guess what?
It immensely improved my writing. Those books taught me the ins and outs of writing. As I would read those books I look for the structures, hooks, and formatting to understand why they’re written the way they’ve been written.
Who were those writers I learned from? I’ve got you!
PS: This story is sponsored by Medium Masterclass.
Now let’s dive in!
1. Tim Ferriss
Tim
Who doesn’t know this guy?
One of the most famous internet individuals in the content creation world. He’s the author of the Book: The 4-Hour Work Week, which has sold 2,100,000+ copies. I came across Tim’s work around mid-2022.
He’s also written an interesting blog post that absolutely went viral: 11 Reasons Not to Become Famous. This blog post alone was one of the reasons I really like and admire his work.
Tim’s Books
- Tools Of Titans
- The 4-Hour Body
- The 4-Hour Work Week
Search these books on Google and you’ll find them.
Tim’s Thoughts On Writing
- Start With a Question: Instead of looking at writing as a grueling task, begin by simply asking: What might this look like, if it were easy?
- Have a Routine: A rock-solid, daily routine where you do not have to think about “logistics” is key.
- Start Small: My quota is two crappy pages per day. I keep it really low so I’m not so intimidated that I never get started.
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2. Derek Sivers
This guy is amazing!
In 2008, he sold his company CD Baby for $22M and donated the entire amount to a charitable trust for music education. How sweet is that?
Derek completely changed my perspective on living a life and made me realize what’s possible in the world. Most of his perspectives about living a life, writing, relationships, business, and money really resonate with me.
Bold claim: If there is anyone on earth I want to design my life around, it would be Derek’s life.
Derek’s Books
- How To Live
- Hell Yeah Or No
- Useful Not True
- Anything You Want
- Your Music And People
Derek’s Thoughts On Writing
- Every new idea is accompanied by a childlike excitement. Capitalize on it. Get to writing right when you have an epiphany. Your work will have a unique energy that you’ll lose by waiting.
- To write is to filter the past for the future. Writing is how you choose what you (and the world) remember.
- The technique that’s improved his writing more than anything else in 20 years: When writing your first draft, make each new line a new paragraph. Club them together at the publishing stage, but at the drafting stage, this is how you check whether the lines stand on their own.
- What is obvious to you may be a eureka to someone else. Don’t pre-filter. Get your ideas out on the page first. Then, edit.
- If you’ve got writer’s block, enjoy the silence while it lasts.
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3. Paul Graham
Paul Graham is the co-founder of Ycombinator, which is one of the most successful funding companies for startups.
He has a pretty simple personal website where he writes blog posts about life, business, money, learnings, etc. Some of his best essays like: Alive or Default Dead? & Do Things That Don’t Scale, which you can’t help but read.
I pay close attention to his ideas more than his writing!
Paul’s Books
- On Lisp
- ANSI Common Lisp
- Hackers & Painters
Paul’s Thoughts On Writing
- When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think.
- If you simply manage to write in spoken language, you’ll be ahead of 95% of writers. And it’s so easy to do: just don’t let a sentence through unless it’s the way you’d say it to a friend.
- The other reason my writing ends up being simple is the way I do it. I write the first draft fast, then spend days editing it, trying to get everything just right. Much of this editing is cutting, and that makes simple writing even simpler.
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4. Morgan Housel
I remember him saying a line in the “How I Write” podcast with David that goes like this: “People don’t remember books, they remember sentences.”
This was an “Aha moment” for me to think about how I write sentences.
He says: Assume that every sentence you write costs you $100. This way you’ll try to cut the unnecessary sentences, which is so true, right?
Every week I go to his website to check if he has published something new. Why? I’m always waiting for his new blog posts to read!
Morgan’s Books
- Same As Ever
- The Psychology Of Money
Morgan’s Thoughts On Writing
- You have five seconds to get people’s attention. Books, blogs, emails, reports, it doesn’t matter — if you don’t sell them in five seconds you’ve exhausted most of their patience.
- Good ideas are easy to write, bad ideas are hard. Difficulty is a quality signal, and writer’s block usually indicates more about your ideas than your writing.
- Whoever says the most stuff in the fewest words wins.
- If you have an idea but think “Someone has already written that” just remember there are 1,010 published biographies of Winston Churchill.
- Don’t overthink it. Just start writing. Great musicians find their music in jam sessions — unstructured, no planning, just seeing what happens. I think good writing is the same. If you think about it too much, you’ll be stuck. Start with one brave sentence and see where it goes.
- Big words mask little thoughts. They’re an attempt to fool the reader into thinking you’re smart when you have nothing smart to say.
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5. Tim Urban
I’m telling you: You would laugh so hard when you read Tim’s writing. Not because of the words he uses or the sentences he writes, but because the way he illustrates his point by drawing chucklesome images.
I remember once someone saying: he is Elon Musk’s favorite blogger. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I do feel like it might be true because of his writing.
This is one of the most popular blog posts on his website — Wait But Why.
Tim’s Books
- What’s Our Problem?
Tim’s Thoughts On Writing
- Read a lot. It’s like fertilizer.
- Don’t judge your own writing at this phase — you’re experimenting and searching and playing — you’re not doing your best writing yet. If your mammoth is freaking out too much and ruining things, start with an anonymous blog.
- Each time you go through the hard, painful work of agonizing over writing that isn’t working and eventually get it to click, you become a better writer.
- If you get feedback as you grow as a writer, be careful where it’s coming from. The person giving feedback should A) believe in you, B) be rooting for you, and C) be completely aware that what they’re reading isn’t your max potential but you’re experimenting, gaining confidence, and trying to figure out your voice.
- Remember that in most cases, the ideas behind the writing are more important than the quality of the writing itself. You’d rather have great ideas and pretty good writing than the other way around.
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6. Mark Manson
Hey you beautiful bastard!
I’m not saying this to you, actually, this is how sometimes Mark starts his writing. Why? Because he doesn’t give a f*ck lol.
And to be honest, his writing is so addictive. Once you start reading his posts you won’t realize when one post turns into two, two into four…You can’t help but just want to read more and more.
He really knows how to grab the reader’s attention and keep holding them as long as possible. Meaning, he has mastered the art of writing.
Mark’s Books
- Everything Is Fucked
- The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck
Mark’s Thoughts On Writing
- Good writing never goes out of style. And truly great writing cannot be suppressed. A great article on a great topic written beautifully will be successful no matter where it is or who wrote it. Guaranteed.
- Until you’ve written 100 pages about a topic, you really don’t know how much you enjoy writing about it. And until you’ve published 100 pages about a topic, you have no idea how much people will enjoy reading what you have to say about it.
- It takes a lot of writing and experimentation for each person to find their own individual style and voice, what they care about, what others care about, and so on. This is a natural process.
- The tone of your writing does two things: it builds your brand image and it determines the type of relationship that you have with your readers. Decide on your tone of voice by looking at the nature of the industry you’re in.
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7. Nicolas Cole
This is the guy who literally helped & motivated me to start writing online.
I remember sending him an email in 2022, asking if I could get a PDF version of his book: The Art And Business Of Online. And guess what? Within 24 hours, he replied by attaching the PDF of his book, wishing me good luck with my online writing journey.
I can’t forget that day!
I have consumed and gained a lot of knowledge through his Medium stories, Quora answers, Twitter threads, podcasts, and YouTube videos.
What’s more, his book, The Art And Business Of Online Writing singlehandedly improved my writing.
Nicolas’ Books
- The Art And Business Of Ghostwriting
- The Art And Business Of Online Writing
Nicolas’ Thoughts On Writing
- In the game of Online Writing, volume wins.
- The Golden Intersection of great writing is: Answering The Reader’s Question and Telling Them An Entertaining Story
- The Curiosity Gap in your headline tells the reader what this piece of writing is about, who it’s for, and what it’s promising — all without revealing the answer.
- If your goal is to be a successful writer, then social platforms are for publishing first and consuming second.
- When it comes to writing online, platforms will always change, but the rules will stay (pretty much) the same.
- What makes a badge of credibility valuable isn’t really the badge itself. It’s how the writer chooses to wear it.
- There are 2 types of writers today: those who use data to inform and improve their writing, and those who fail.
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8. David Perell
David runs a writing school called “Write of Passage,” which costs anything from $4,000 to $9000 to join. He recently started a podcast “How I Write,” which I mentioned earlier in this story.
I can say: His podcast is the single best source for any aspiring writer who wants to become a better writer or wants to understand the writing game.
His writing, YouTube videos, and Twitter threads/tweets are some of the best pieces I’ve read or consumed on the internet. I can’t thank him enough for what he’s doing for aspiring writers.
David’s Books
- He hasn’t written any books yet.
David’s Thoughts On Writing
- You should write regularly even if you don’t want to become a full-time writer because writing is how you train yourself to think better.
- Get ideas on paper: Put words on the page as fast as you can. First drafts are always messy. But you can only start shaping ideas into polished writing once they’re out of your head. The beauty and clarity you desire will emerge with each edit.
- Painters look at lots of art, musicians listen to lots of music, and writers read all the time. Read to collect ideas and get inspired. Save the best ideas into your note-taking system and let yourself be inspired by the majesty of beautiful prose.
- Great writers don’t walk around with perfect ideas in their heads. Their minds are as messy as yours. But by writing, they identify their best ideas to share them with the world.
- People think you need to be an expert before you write about something, but actually, writing about something makes you an expert
- The best pieces of writing advice I can come up with after doing it every day for five years: 1) If your ideas are boring, get a life. 2) If you already have a life and your ideas are still boring, you’re not listening carefully enough.
- A daily writing habit is one of the best things you can do for yourself because in a world of endless distractions, it forces you to slow down and listen to your thoughts.
- Writing is a truth generator because you’re more likely to deceive yourself with thoughts in your head than words on the page
- Good writing begins with creating the space in your life to think deep thoughts, which you can’t do if you’re always busy.
- Some of your best writing can only arise when you’re boiling with anger, so when you’re pissed off, sprint to the keyboard and bleed your emotions onto the page. Then, edit once you’re calm.
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