Nicolas Cole started answering Quora questions after work in 2014 to practice writing. Each day he'd learn something at his ad agency job, then write about it by answering a related question. The habit forced him to crystallize what he learned and became the framework he still uses to improve both his writing and thinking.
I started writing on Quora in 2014. At the time, I was maybe a year out of college. I was working at an ad agency. I was the lowest paid person at this ad agency, fresh outta college. I didn't know anything. And I got introduced to Quora and I saw it as a vehicle to practice my writing. The whole game was answering people's questions. So you would find a question in your feed and anyone could answer the question. And what I started doing to accelerate my own learning, 'cause every day I would go to work, I was 24 years old, I didn't know anything. And so every day I was learning something new. And how I started writing on Quora over a decade ago is I would go to work, I would inevitably learn something new. After work, I would walk down the street to Starbucks, I would order a coffee, I would open Quora, and I would find a question that was related to whatever thing I felt like I had learned that day at work. All I was doing was answering questions based on something I had learned that day. My point is the single easiest place to start, and I still use this framework today, is to ask yourself, what have I learned over the past 2 years or 2 months or 2 weeks or 2 hours? And how can I use writing as a forcing function to crystallize what I just learned?
What Every Writer Gets Wrong About Their Audience #writing #creator #writingtips
