🏷️ Categories: Writing.
I want you to know this: I wish I had read this when I first started.
If you want to start writing and you feel like your words could go further—that they lack impact or fail to resonate with anyone… I’ll share with you 7 keys I’ve learned and applied during more than 500 days of writing and over 300 published articles.
Here are the 7 keys you can use right now to strengthen your writing.
1. Ignore the word count
A text isn’t better because it has 800, 1,000, or 2,000 words.
The only thing that matters is: Did you answer what the reader came looking for?
A title is nothing more than a promise. It tells the reader what they’ll find once they begin reading. Your only real job is to deliver that valuable information as clearly as possible.
A Twitter thread won’t have 20,000 words, but it might have 200.
A newsletter won’t have 200 words, but it might have 1,200.
A book won’t have 1,200, but it might have 50,000.
The medium you write for defines what’s acceptable—nothing more.
Just write within that range; it doesn’t matter if today’s newsletter is 700 or 1,500 words. When I started writing on Substack, I’d think: “Too short, it should have at least 800 words.” Now I tell myself: “If the idea is resolved in 700, then it’s 700; if it needs 1,500, then it’s 1,500.”
The metric is not the word count.
The metric is: Did the reader leave with what they came for?
If yes, they’ll come back.
2. Make an “anti-list”
People are tired of hearing the same things.
The perfect diet.
The perfect study routine.
The 10 secrets of productivity.
They’re always the same clichés: sleep 8 hours, drink water, plan, meditate. Everyone repeats them. And when everyone repeats the same thing, you add nothing.
Imagine your writing is a fruit shop.
Apples are the typical advice: easy to sell, everyone likes them. But here’s the problem: there are fifty fruit shops on the same street selling the exact same apples. No one will remember yours.
The solution is simple: offer something different.
Yes, sell apples—every fruit shop needs some clichés—but add the specialized fruit that makes you unique: passion fruit, dragon fruit, lychee, papaya. Those unexpected fruits make customers say: “I haven’t seen this anywhere else—I’ll try it!”
Want to stand out as a writer? Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.
Example: If you want to write “The perfect productivity routine,” you think of waking up early, organizing schedules, taking breaks, drinking coffee, sleeping 8 hours. Sound cliché? Good. Now the interesting part: you can’t use any of that.
That’s your anti-list.
What else can you offer? When you eliminate the obvious, the unexpected emerges. This technique comes from option suppression—look it up if you want to go deeper. For example, you could start your real productivity list like this:
Batch errands into a single day: groceries, pharmacy, paperwork.
Decide your weekly menu on Sunday: no more “What do we eat today?”
Write your tasks on paper, not your phone: avoid digital distractions.
These productivity tips are far less common.
That’s the power of the anti-list.
Want an example from me?
How aerodynamic drag in Formula 1 applies to productivity.
3. Start strong and end strong
The first and last lines are the two pillars of the text—if they’re weak, everything collapses.
Readers mostly remember what grabbed them at the beginning and what you concluded at the end. What’s in the middle matters, of course, but the introduction and the ending carry the maximum tension; the middle is just the development. This applies both at the article level and within each block.
That’s what makes the text effortless to read and brings key ideas to the foreground.
If you look back at what you just read, you’ll see the structure: first a striking statement—“The first and last lines are the two pillars of the text”—then the development that expands it, and finally an unforgettable closing: “That’s what makes the text effortless to read and brings key ideas to the foreground.”
You’ve just seen how effective this structure is.
When you write online—where attention is fragile and readers can close your article in a second—writing this way ensures they stay. This is due to the “F-pattern effect.” Look it up to understand how we read on the internet and how to adapt your text to that reading pattern.
Then you’ll understand why this “strong start and strong finish” is so effective.
4. Don’t write only long paragraphs
Not everything has to be dense text blocks.
Newsletters are read on small screens, amid distractions, sometimes standing on the subway or bus. Readers need breathing room and text that’s effortlessly legible.
Give them exactly that.
Use lists when you enumerate ideas, descriptions, or steps.
Don’t hesitate to include visuals, images, or supporting elements.
Insert short sentences when you want to emphasize something—like in tip #3.
This makes your writing more readable and aligned with how people read online.
5. Delete the “I…”
“I think…”, “I believe…”. These openings are redundant.
You’re the author—obviously the ideas are yours, you don’t need to clarify it constantly. I realized this after re-reading my articles many times: those filler phrases became stones in the path. They tired the reader and added nothing.
Deleting “I…” makes the sentence stronger.
Instead of “I think writing is a muscle,” write: “Writing is a muscle.” The second hits harder, more directly.
The exception? When quoting others.
If I mention Hemingway, García Márquez, or a scientific study, I clarify. That’s where attribution matters. In all other cases, readers already know the voice is yours. Anything not attributed to someone else is yours.
Clear the stones and weeds from the reader’s path.
6. Warm up before you start
No one walks into the gym and lifts 100 kilos without warming up.
Why do we do that when we write?
Julia Cameron recommended what she called “morning pages,” meaning writing pages about anything that comes to mind to wander, generate ideas, and prepare the mind for focused writing. Spend 10 minutes writing freely. Write about what you dreamed, what you think of the day, what you ate for breakfast. It doesn’t matter.
The result doesn’t matter; the goal is to clear mental noise and enter flow.
7. Use few adverbs—avoid the ones ending in -ly
Hemingway knew it and García Márquez said it clearly:
“Adverbs ending in -mente are an impoverishing vice. I haven’t used any in my books for a long time. I force myself to find richer, more expressive ways of writing.” — Gabriel García Márquez, Living to Tell the Tale
Every time you write quickly, subtly, delicately, the text loses strength.
A good verb does the job better than any adverb. Don’t say “walked slowly,” say “ambled.” Don’t say “spoke passionately,” say “exclaimed.”
The message becomes clearer—therefore more memorable.
When revising your text, do this exercise: look for adverbs and delete them.
You’ll be surprised how little you needed them.
Writing better is having the right tools for each situation:
Ignore the word count
Make an anti-list
Start and end strong
Don’t rely only on long paragraphs
Delete the “I…”
Warm up before writing
Use few adverbs—avoid the -ly ones
Small practices that, together, make your writing resonate and leave an impression.
Nothing more to add.
✍️ Your turn: What other writing key has worked for you and deserves to be on this list?
💭 Quote of the day: “Writing as a poet is one thing; writing as a historian, another.” — Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote.
See you next time! 👋
References 📚
Márquez, G. G. (2002). Vivir para contarla.
This post is to cheer your accomplishment as much as your sage advice. 500 days of ongoing productivity is a milestone worthy of a great celebration.
Good advice, I would add the general advice of changing "in order to" to "to."
I sometimes do like to use "I" statements to express hesitancy, such as "I sense" conveys less certainty than just stating something. "I guess" even less. And "I feel" can also be about something I have thought about...
Other times, if my post relies mostly on other people's work, I may use "I think" to separate their ideas from mine.
thanks for this good advice!