Day 34

Writing is a skill. In here I send notes of my writing from the 50 days of writing course by David Perell, to reflect, develop and build my writing style.

Day 34
Photo by Mick Haupt / Unsplash

In the 34th email from 50 days of writing, David Perell talks about creating a writing box.

Every topic expands once we get to start writing about it. I know I started writing about the idea of building better habits and end up looking for articles so deep that I didn't even put through a single word in my Notion document. I thought I am the one who is deliberately doing such things and wasting my time. Until I read this email from David.

He expands on the topic of creating the summary box by saying -

A topic expands so much that it creates a writing sprawl where it grows so far that you can’t wrap your head around it anymore. Sprawl leads to confusion, and confusion leads to the kind of writer’s block that prevents you from writing anything at all. To combat writing sprawl, I recommend nestling a Summary Box inside a Circle of Distracting Ideas.

A Summary Box is the excerpt you give to readers before any article as in what you are about to read.

It is the outline of your article you want to write. It is the middle step in between Finding the Shiny Dime and the Island and Bridges Strategy.

David also recommends this if you’re struggling to write a Summary Box, pretend to have two minutes to explain your article to a friend.

So, after building a summary box, David says to focus on each idea on the box and double down on the idea(don't care about the other topics just the idea you choose to write about and be done with the idea). Check out this post (The Post-It Notes Strategy) to know more about how to outline and write even better.  

My Thoughts:

This was a pivotal strategy in the writing process that I was missing. Writing a summary box is like setting up mini goals to finish the topic. I would be implementing the same in my writing process from now on.

The process now looks like -

  1. Finding The Shiny Dime
  2. Summary Box
  3. Post-It Notes Strategy
  4. doubling Down On Individual Idea (On The Post-It Note).
  5. Adjusting The Post-It Notes According To The Liking.

This is the first draft.

This literally didn't happen in my writings ever. I would just write my thoughts and then send it to a friend who would check for grammatical and spelling checks and if there is any would change it and ship it.

This Summary box email helped me change my understanding of how to write the correct way.

Thank you for reading.

For more of Perell's work, you can signup for the 50 Days of Writing Course by clicking and signing up to receive one mail every day with an amazing take on writing.

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