"How I Write"
Some guidelines for aspiring bloggers
For a variety of reasons, I seem to have fallen into the role of online editor in 2026. Managing my own blog and editing this one, trying to keep a running list of contacts for writers and publishers. In the course of this work, people have sent me a fair amount of their expository writing to comment on and (sometimes) edit. Corrections are often needed; sometimes submissions need more direction concerning the basic form of persuasive writing writ large, as it might appear in any other popular blog or magazine in the modern world
Under these circumstances, I have felt the compulsion to write my own guide on “how to write an essay” or at least a description of “how I write an essay”. Since I am now an official “SubStack Bestseller”, perhaps I can use these pseudo-creds as a justification to write about how I think about writing, along with the things that I typically look for in an article ready to be published on the blogs that I edit.
It’s nothing personal, but many young writers often seem to miss how good writing should draw people in and communicate a point. Often, drafts come across as meme-y or otherwise have a style native to some online forum like Reddit or 4Chan. Articles often lack flow and structure, or if they have it, their structure follows the basic forms learned for writing college applications. Most importantly, much of said writing doesn’t communicate a sense of purpose, even when the initial ideas that motivate it are otherwise good.
Now I don’t consider myself a great writer. I certainly have never been trained to produce persuasive articles as part of my formal education. Nevertheless, I am a consummate reader who feels deeply invested in improving writing, especially among my ideological and generational cohort. Moreover, since many people seem to think that I am good enough to edit their articles, perhaps they are also curious about how I think about producing compelling prose.
This is definitely not the only way to put the digital pen to online paper. But perhaps expounding on my own personal philosophy and process for producing the written word will help some people get started.
