Warning: This is just a journal entry mostly for me

Unless you're trying to improve your writing with active reading, you should not waste your time.

This is just me documenting my life this year, in a messy blog post without much structure.

I just discovered a new method 2 months ago to improve my writing.

I'm going to link a special little known resource that has helped me start using and improve my active reading skills (my writing isn't that good yet hehe)

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Hi future me,

I found a video workshop...

It had 0 likes and only 94 views, and a comment of someone not understanding what was happening.

That video workshop was about how to improve your writing using a brand new method.

And it all comes down to this...

"To write better, read a lot" is not enough

Everyone in the writing world will tell you: "To write better, read a lot."

But, what does it mean?

That's a problem.

Because there's nothing practical in that statement.

Until now.

You see, I learned long time ago that it's important to read if you want to write well.

But it was in the beginning of this year that I started to do copywork.

And if I learned something, I don't remember much of what I acquired using that method.

Move forward to April 12, 2022.

Thanks to a friend, and a book (Take Their Money by Kyle Milligan), I discovered that the best writers do a special kind of reading that isn't just reading or writing by hand a piece of work and forget it later.

Some of these ideas aren't new, but it's clear that nobody is teaching them, and only the top 0,01% writers know.

Because I haven't seen anyone teaching a method to systematically acquiring the patterns and strategies of the best writers you know.

It's called active reading.

And if you think you're familiar with that concept, think again.

Chances are, you probably aren't.

No no, this is much better than that, Newman.

And not only it helps me understand in a variety of hierarchical levels the writing and intention of a piece of excellent work,

It's helped me come up and refine an incredible method to internalize the patterns and strategies of the best writers of any writing field.

Be it legal, business, novel, you name it.

While I'm still refining it, this method has shown effectively boost both reading efficacy and writing skills by a large margin.

I'm currently using it to improve my sales letter copy, since I'm trying to become a top-tier sales letter copywriter.

The process is simple:

1. Find a good piece of copy (or piece of excellent writing you want to emulate)
2. Active Read and translate the sub-text (structure, pacing, emotions, etc)
3. Write: Write trying to imitate a chunk of writing you want to improve.

After you read, you're going to have some notes of what the writer does in his work. You're going to imitate the strategies or characteristics you find most interesting from what you learned.

The last part may be more abstract than the others. It was hard for me to figure out how to do it.

Until I saw how a friend of mine (who's a deliberate practice geek) did it.

He used to write practice passages and send me emails telling what he was trying to accomplish.

I found them again 1 week ago, and since then, I have a more structured way to improve from my daily sales letters breakdowns

And although I'm still in the early stages of this active reading system, I'm slowly starting to see writing patterns and acquiring them through writing practice drills.

Consistency is key.

I'm trying to become obsessed with active reading copy and writing copy everyday.

P.S.: Here's your promise

Only a selected few will benefit from the following, but for anyone who's interested in watching the video workshop, you can watch it here

It's led by Andrea Ross, an awesome lecturer in the University Writing Program. With a certificate in Reading Instructions from UC Irvine, and at least a decade in practice.

Peace out,

Newman