How To Unlock Your Inner Genius And Create Quality Work

Stephen King wrote in his book, On Writing.

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

It makes sense. How else would you have a sense of how to write something unless you’ve read how other people put it?

(The cherry on top I would add to this statement is “be interested in the craft of writing”. Have taste, if you will. This will result in you noticing beautiful passages and word choice.)

It goes the same way in any one of our desired fields of mastery.

“If you want to be an artist, you must do two things above all others: look at a lot of great art and make a lot of art.”

“If you want to speak another language, you must do two things above all others: read from and listen to native speakers and create your own output.”

The quality of what you input is important. A large amount of high-quality input will “calibrate your machine” to notice what is so beautiful about what was done.

If you read only sloppy and hard-to-follow writing, it will be a slow road finding your own clear and concise style.

But if you consume from all kinds of beautiful sources, your output will naturally want to be of the same caliber.

The emphasis I place on Stephen King’s statement, however, is on having a lot of input.

Without any input, there is nothing to output.

I believe that every inspired writer was first, an avid reader.

I believe that every inspired actor was first, a student of actors.

I believe that every inspired leader was first, a student of leaders.

Inhale and inhabit the world of your mentors, and you will naturally want to output like them. But since you are you, you will put your own special twist on it.