What to Focus on First (and Next) When Starting as a Writer

The sh*t nobody tells you about starting out

March 11, 2025

What to Focus on First (and Next) When Starting as a Writer. Zohvib

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Most advice for new writers is garbage.

“Write every day!”

“Find your voice!”

“Build your platform!”

All of this sounds great until you sit down and realize you have no fucking clue what you’re actually supposed to be doing.

Here’s what nobody tells you when you’re starting: you’re going to suck.

Not in the cute “beginner trying their best” way — in the “did a drunk toddler write this?” kind of way. And that’s completely normal.

The problem isn’t that you suck.

The problem is that most writing advice skips this uncomfortable reality and jumps to tips that only make sense once you’ve developed basic competence.

Let’s get into what you should really be focusing on.

Stop obsessing about your writing and start obsessing about this instead

Want to know the biggest mistake new writers make?

They obsess over their writing when they should be obsessing over their reading.

Here’s a truth bomb: your output will never exceed your input.

If you want to write well, you need to read obsessively, strategically, and like your writing life depends on it — because it does.

I’m not talking about casually scrolling through articles while you wait for your coffee. I mean developing a borderline unhealthy relationship with the written word.

You should be reading the kind of stuff you want to write, then reading the stuff that influenced those writers, then reading the weird experimental shit that breaks all the rules.

When I started writing, I thought my voice, style, and ideas would emerge from some magical wellspring of creativity within me. What a joke.

Everything I write is in conversation with what I’ve read.

Every “original” thought I have is actually my brain remixing and responding to the thousands of things I’ve consumed.

The most successful writers I know don’t just read — they study. They take apart sentences to see how they work. They notice patterns in paragraphs.

They pay attention to what makes them keep reading and what makes them want to close the tab. Then they steal what works, adapt it, and make it their own.

So before you worry about developing your voice or building a platform or any of that other advanced shit, focus on filling your head with good writing.

Your brain needs raw materials to work with. Give it the premium stuff.

Why most “Find Your Voice” advice is complete bullshit

“Find your voice” might be the most useless piece of writing advice ever given. It’s like telling someone to “find their personality.”

You don’t find your voice by looking for it. You develop it by using it — repeatedly, consistently, and usually pretty badly at first.

Your voice isn’t some hidden treasure waiting to be discovered. It’s something you build, one shitty draft at a time.

And in the beginning, it’s going to sound like a bad imitation of your favorite writers because that’s exactly what it is.

Every writer starts as a mimic. I started by imitating Chuck Palahniuk, then David Foster Wallace, then whoever else I was reading at the time.

My early work was a mess of competing influences with no coherence whatsoever. It was embarrassing. It was also necessary.

Instead of trying to find your unique snowflake of a voice, focus on clarity.

  • Can someone understand what the hell you’re trying to say?

  • Does your paragraph have a point?

  • Does your sentence make sense?

These basic questions matter infinitely more than whether your prose sounds like “you.”

The irony is that your voice emerges most clearly when you stop trying to sound special and start trying to sound clear.

When you focus on communicating effectively rather than impressing people, your natural patterns of thought and expression start to shine through.

So forget finding your voice. Focus on finding clarity.

Your voice will develop in the background while you’re busy doing the actual work of writing.

The only metric that actually matters (and it’s not what you think)

New writers love to obsess over metrics.

  • How many views did I get?

  • How many claps/likes/shares?

  • How many subscribers?

  • Did anyone leave a comment?

While engagement metrics aren’t completely useless, they’re nowhere near as important as the one metric that actually predicts your success as a writer: completion rate.

Completion rate is simple:

How many pieces do you actually finish? Not start — finish.

Don't think about writing — actually write.

Not outline or research or plan — complete.

Most people who say they want to be writers never actually finish anything. They have dozens of drafts, hundreds of ideas, and zero completed works.

They’re always preparing to write, planning to write, or starting to write. But they rarely get to the finishing part.

This is why completion matters more than perfection. A shitty article that’s done is infinitely more valuable than the brilliant masterpiece that exists only in your head.

The finished piece can be published, read, critiqued, and improved. The unfinished idea, no matter how genius, is worthless.

When I started writing, I thought quality was everything. I’d spend weeks crafting the “perfect” article only to abandon it because it wasn’t living up to my impossible standards.

Then I switched to focusing on completion instead of perfection.

I committed to finishing everything I started, even if it sucked. Suddenly, I was actually publishing work instead of just thinking about publishing work.

The math is simple: if you finish one piece per week, in a year you’ll have 52 pieces. Some will be garbage, some will be decent, and a few might be great.

But if you only start pieces and never finish them, in a year you’ll have zero pieces and zero chance of improvement.

So track your completion rate. Make finishing your priority.

Quality comes from quantity, and quantity comes from developing the habit of finishing what you start.

The uncomfortable truth about becoming a “Real” writer

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about becoming a “real” writer: there is no moment of arrival.

No certificate shows up in the mail. No official writing fairy sprinkles you with legitimacy dust.

You become a writer by writing, and you stay a writer by continuing to write. That’s it. That’s the whole secret.

The most dangerous myth for new writers is the idea that there’s some threshold you cross where suddenly writing gets easy, you feel confident, and imposter syndrome vanishes.

I’ve published hundreds of articles, written books, and built an audience of hundreds of thousands, and I still sometimes sit down to write and think, “I have no fucking idea what I’m doing.”

The difference between professional writers and aspiring writers isn’t talent or luck or magical inspiration.

It’s that professionals have simply developed the ability to keep going despite the self-doubt, despite the bad days, despite the voices in their head telling them they’re frauds.

If you’re waiting to feel ready, to feel like a “real” writer, you’ll be waiting forever.

The secret is to write anyway. To finish pieces anyway. To put your work out into the world anyway. To fail publicly, learn from it, and come back again anyway.

These aren’t the sexy, inspirational tips most writing gurus sell you. But they’re the things that actually matter when you’re starting out.

The rest — the platform building, the monetization strategies, the advanced techniques — all of that comes later, after you’ve done the unsexy work of becoming competent.

All the best.

Look, you’re going to suck at this. Everyone does. But you can either suck for years figuring it out alone, or you can suck less, faster, with me.

Two 30-minute Zoom calls. No bullshit about ‘finding your voice.’ Just ruthless focus on what actually works.