How long did it take you to write well

[Sherb]

It boggles my mind how many of my acquaintances born and raised here in the good ol' US of A with at least a high school education write word salad and pass it off as good 'nuff. Those of you who are not native who get discouraged because your writing skills may not hold a candle to some of us vets, rest assured that you are on hallowed ground and are likely in the top 25% of people who can comprehend English.

I started writing when I was extremely young.

Five year old Sherb would be scribbling stories down on blank sheets of printer paper while everyone else was coloring outside the lines.

Ten year old Sherb was spending rainy weekends holed up in his basement room, typing away on an old beige Windows 95 until my clothes smelled of pine and smoke from the wood stove.

Twelve year old Sherb was writing short stories about him and his friends going on incredible adventures together. I would take requests from buddies and classmates and turn their ideas into penned words.

Thirteen year old Sherb wrote a 200-page book about a group of college kids who stumble across a dead body on a walk at night and have to prove their innocence. This was written over the course of a month spent on campus in a summer program at a school that would eventually become my alma mater.

From there it progressed to:

• Winning weeklong trips in essay contests
• Becoming the state speech contest champion with a passionate speech about how Levi Strauss changed the world
• Raking in scholarship money and getting paid to go to college debt-free because of my propensity for the written word
• Moving my peers in a university creative writing course taught by author Ron Rash with a minute-by-minute accurate story from inside Chernobyl
• Writing a fake murder mystery blog that was the talk of my college for months, leaving behind real "clues" for people to follow
• Acing a communications class with an impassioned speech on how to adopt A Modest Proposal to modern day America to erase the national debt
• Continuing my writing passion into a half dozen partially-finished novels on varying topics
• Using my talents to score incredible job opportunities doing what I truly love to do and making knock-down bank doing so
• Hitting $100,000 in revenues writing for the fine people of Blackhatworld as of two weeks ago

Now I have been shifting focus to my own projects. I've got eight local projects in the works simultaneously that, once launched, will rock the area. My goal is to make it on the 40 under 40 list for my city of ~1 million people in the next few years. Only time will tell.

Writing opens up so many doors. If there is one skill I would recommend most to others, it is to master the written word. If anyone needs some pointers or tips, I'll be putting up a thread about it in the next few weeks. Keep an eye out. And keep writing and writing and writing. I know I've watched several members in this thread alone improve their skills immensely on a personal level.

 

[dkv023]

It boggles my mind how many of my acquaintances born and raised here in the good ol' US of A with at least a high school education write word salad and pass it off as good 'nuff. Those of you who are not native who get discouraged because your writing skills may not hold a candle to some of us vets, rest assured that you are on hallowed ground and are likely in the top 25% of people who can comprehend English.

Thank you Sherb for your background story. But I don`t not understood what is your point about writing skill of non-native? The problem with non-native writing is a foreign culture for those who don`t live in US or english speaker country. You grow up in US soil, so you know culture well.

 

[Roger Marquez]

I am in the process of developing the required writing skills that will help me drive traffic to my blog to potentially make some money out of it.

In the relative small amount of time i´ve been doing this i can say it´s like any other skill you´re trying to develop.

It takes time, consistency, discipline, and lots of patience.

Especially, if it´s a skill you´re not familiar with nor have any natural talent for it.

But i am a firm believer that ANY KNOWLEDGE/SKILL IS TEACHABLE AND LEARNABLE!

 

[Cedric Writes]

I've always been extremely good at writing, I have a HUGE vocabulary, I never paid attention in school but I'd always be top of the class reading/writing

 

[alonelywriter]

Three years

 

[Mark Quinn]

Copywriting, or business writing in general is nice in that it has a specific goal. You want to communicate an idea, persuade people to do something. You can easily measure if you're doing a good job. That's the only thing that matters.

Sounding native, having the most beautiful style in the world or whatever is hard, but fortunately that's not your goal.

You're Russian, right? Are you a great writer in Russian? Probably not. So get over this notion that English is the only obstacle to great writing.

Making a coherent argument is pretty language agnostic.

 

[Deleted member 1333509]

It's normally very easy for native English speakers to know that something is written by a non-native.. All it takes is a single sentence to be formed slightly incorrectly and it's obvious because native speakers just don't ever do that. My guess is that if I tried to learn Arabic or Chinese and become a copywriter in those languages it would be incredibly easy for native speakers to tell that I wasn't a native copywriter also.

I've lived in many different English speaking countries, but I was lucky to have completed my schooling in the UK which has by far the best education system of all western countries (no offence to any Aussies, Yanks or Canadians) and the quality of the manipulation of the English language that the average English school student has compared to other places is fairly significant imo.

 

[onlinemarketer12]

It took me few months but I am still not good at every niche.

 

[Andortion]

In my case I would say about 1,5-2 years to become pretty consistent, but that is of a lot of deliberate practice even when I didn't feel like it.

 

[jdmish123]

Blog articles are actually not that difficult to write if you follow a formula. The best Blog articles follow this simple guide from what I've seen:

100 word introduction

h2 title for sub-section heading

150-200 words about sub-section

h2 title for sub-section heading #2

150-200 words about sub-section

100 word conclusion

That will give you a 500-600 word article. You can up the sub-section to 300 words, you can also increase the introduction/conclusion to 200 words. If you need longer articles just add more subsections.

As far as learning how to write in a style that sounds natural that just takes practicec. For a non-native speaker I would actually recommend working with someone who is a native English writer who can critique your work so you can learn from your mistakes on what does and does not sound like a native speaker. If you're just guessing you're not going to get anywhere. As someone who has hired tons of writers from all over the internet let me tell you that I can spot someone who is not from the U.S. pretty quickly.

 

[Namelus999]

Yea I’d just give it practice. I know most native speakers can barely write complete sentences let alone paragraphs devoid of errors. If you read paragraphs In the niche I think you’ll have it, in terms of the lingo and the flow of most passages and tone.

 

[GILGAME$H]

It boggles my mind how many of my acquaintances born and raised here in the good ol' US of A with at least a high school education write word salad and pass it off as good 'nuff. Those of you who are not native who get discouraged because your writing skills may not hold a candle to some of us vets, rest assured that you are on hallowed ground and are likely in the top 25% of people who can comprehend English.

I started writing when I was extremely young.

Five year old Sherb would be scribbling stories down on blank sheets of printer paper while everyone else was coloring outside the lines.

Ten year old Sherb was spending rainy weekends holed up in his basement room, typing away on an old beige Windows 95 until my clothes smelled of pine and smoke from the wood stove.

Twelve year old Sherb was writing short stories about him and his friends going on incredible adventures together. I would take requests from buddies and classmates and turn their ideas into penned words.

Thirteen year old Sherb wrote a 200-page book about a group of college kids who stumble across a dead body on a walk at night and have to prove their innocence. This was written over the course of a month spent on campus in a summer program at a school that would eventually become my alma mater.

From there it progressed to:

• Winning weeklong trips in essay contests
• Becoming the state speech contest champion with a passionate speech about how Levi Strauss changed the world
• Raking in scholarship money and getting paid to go to college debt-free because of my propensity for the written word
• Moving my peers in a university creative writing course taught by author Ron Rash with a minute-by-minute accurate story from inside Chernobyl
• Writing a fake murder mystery blog that was the talk of my college for months, leaving behind real "clues" for people to follow
• Acing a communications class with an impassioned speech on how to adopt A Modest Proposal to modern day America to erase the national debt
• Continuing my writing passion into a half dozen partially-finished novels on varying topics
• Using my talents to score incredible job opportunities doing what I truly love to do and making knock-down bank doing so
• Hitting $100,000 in revenues writing for the fine people of Blackhatworld as of two weeks ago

Now I have been shifting focus to my own projects. I've got eight local projects in the works simultaneously that, once launched, will rock the area. My goal is to make it on the 40 under 40 list for my city of ~1 million people in the next few years. Only time will tell.

Writing opens up so many doors. If there is one skill I would recommend most to others, it is to master the written word. If anyone needs some pointers or tips, I'll be putting up a thread about it in the next few weeks. Keep an eye out. And keep writing and writing and writing. I know I've watched several members in this thread alone improve their skills immensely on a personal level.

Pretty much this. It took me years to get to the point where my writing was top 1% and recognized.

It takes time, focus, and thought. All of that you can develop with non-stop practice.

Easiest way to get better at writing is to read good writing from native speakers; try to copy their style and structure. Then, with time, you can develop your own "feel" and go from there.

 

[William702]

How long did it take you to write well

I'll let you know in another 36 years.

 

[dkv023]

I'll let you know in another 36 years.

Its too long

 

[dkv023]

Blog articles are actually not that difficult to write if you follow a formula. The best Blog articles follow this simple guide from what I've seen:

100 word introduction

h2 title for sub-section heading

150-200 words about sub-section

h2 title for sub-section heading #2

150-200 words about sub-section

100 word conclusion

That will give you a 500-600 word article. You can up the sub-section to 300 words, you can also increase the introduction/conclusion to 200 words. If you need longer articles just add more subsections.

As far as learning how to write in a style that sounds natural that just takes practicec. For a non-native speaker I would actually recommend working with someone who is a native English writer who can critique your work so you can learn from your mistakes on what does and does not sound like a native speaker. If you're just guessing you're not going to get anywhere. As someone who has hired tons of writers from all over the internet let me tell you that I can spot someone who is not from the U.S. pretty quickly.

Nobody will read this useless articles.

 

[andrei.p]

I'm a non-native speaker. It took me about five years of copywriting to become bearable. That's after learning English continuously for about twenty years.
One thing that was most helpful for me is watching US TV shows - that's as close as you can get to experiencing the actual way people use language, not the polished way of movies or books.
You can start by watching Friends and progress all the way to 30 Rock. Once you can watch an episode of 30 Rock and get every single joke, consider yourself fluent. That's when you can begin to learn writing.

 

[dkv023]

I'm a non-native speaker. It took me about five years of copywriting to become bearable. That's after learning English continuously for about twenty years.
One thing that was most helpful for me is watching US TV shows - that's as close as you can get to experiencing the actual way people use language, not the polished way of movies or books.
You can start by watching Friends and progress all the way to 30 Rock. Once you can watch an episode of 30 Rock and get every single joke, consider yourself fluent. That's when you can begin to learn writing.

Without subtitles you will not understand speech, especially tv news there are a lot topics.

 

[seoadvent]

About 22 years. I did 12 years of school then a 4 year law degree in Australia.

I have some admiration for non-native speakers who can write native quality articles. To be honest though, native quality English is very hard. Even the people here who speak exceptionally good English have obvious mistakes in their writing. You can tell it is from a non-native speaker and these people may be relatively excellent at writing in English.

i agree with u that writing quality articles in proper english is difficult , being an english language native speaker myself i cant write great articles ....yet

however, I can spot very obvious mistakes in their articles if there any .

i too would like to learn how to write quality articles better

 

[TheVigilante]

Still working on it as we speak

 

[dabax]

You keep getting better and better. You really do.

That said probably 18 months if I had to guess.

Anyone saying a few months is kidding themselves. The quality of their writing will be clunky and lacking elegance - and they'll only realise this once they're better.

It's painful to see some of my early copywriting. Shit is horrid!