Day 15
Writing is a skill. In here I send notes of my writing from the 50 days of writing course by David Perell, to reflect and develop a better writing system.
In the 15th email from the 50 days of writing course by David Perell, David shares his personal story a bit about how as a child he used to love building model airports. In those model airports, he used to represent the control tower with A shiny dime.
He further mentions -
I start every article with the metaphor of a shiny dime. Like the control tower, it’s the centerpiece of my articles. It represents a tiny but detailed idea that’s easy to visualize. Psychologically, shiny dimes are a coping mechanism for writers who try to explain their entire worldview in a single article.
David further states that writing is like fitness, where consistency breeds Success. He even mentions if overwhelmed by the size of your topic will lead to less writing. As a rule, David asks to follow -
your article isn’t small enough until you can summarize it with a one-liner.
My thoughts:
It is very easy to start writing about a topic and feeling lost in the huge ocean of knowledge that field holds. I recently started writing about the climate change which is yet to be published, but I have stopped writing about it because the topic is huge and I am in no way related to the Field. The references and draft of the article are all in notion but I was expanding the topic.
Now that I see how to build the outline on one shiny dime and write like an athlete method. I will take one strong Concept of an idea and write around it.
The relevance of fitness and writing is a topic I have written about in one of the previously notes. It is having a system that shows us marginal increase in progress will keep up the morale and also will have a significant impact in improving the skill.
key takeaways:
- Have a Control tower (central notion of what you are writing about - A Shine Dime).
- Build on topics related to the Shiny Dime and rest all can be left out.
- Your writing can be small in length and number of words but must be consistent.
- You won’t write if you’re overwhelmed by the size of your topic.
- Treat your writing just like you treat fitness - small incremental progress than having all at one go.
Thank you for reading.
For more of Perell's work, visit David Perell and find his incredible essays to read. You can signup for the 50 Days of Writing Course by clicking and signing up to receive one mail every day with amazing take on writing.
