500 words on how to write 500 words a day

Sick care content marketers will tell you it really is not that hard for doctors to create a blog that has impact. I disagree. It is very hard. But, the hardest part is getting into the habit of writing every day by overcoming your fear of public writing.

Here's a trick to make you more productive. Here is how writing can help you heal from trauma.

Here are some tech tools to get you started.

Writers and editors offer lots of tips on how to write. Here are mine:

1. Get to the root cause of your fear of writing, expressing yourself or asking for help and get over it

2. Get into the habit of writing by understanding how habits are formed and how they are changed. 

3. Read a lot, particularly articles and books that are outside of your area of expertise or specialty domain. Samuel Johnson notes, “The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; I will turn over half a library to make one book.”

4. Create the craving to write, respond to cues and set up a reward system that usually includes money, impact, ego gratification and readers.

5. Write at different times and places and conditions and find out which is most comfortable. Find your writing comfort zone

6. Start by writing about what you know best and have experienced

7. Write something every day whether you publish it or not

8. Find an editor or someone to help. Writing is re-writing

9. Create a voice or unique point of view

10. Know your readers

11. Make your content repetitive, redundant and relational

12. Learn to market online and build your community of interest

13. A medical writer is different than a health and healthcare writer. As my colleague, Stephanie Stephens recently noted, "My master’s is in journalism, not in biology, chemistry or public health, and those writers are very different. I’m also not really an “editor,” and editing is key to top-level medical writing." If you want to be a medical writer, join the American Medical Writers Association.

Get to the point and avoid the dilution effect. Brevity is the soul of wit.

14. Use shorter words and sentences. Then. more people can read and understand what you write.

15. Experience the psychological benefits of writing.

16. Sharpen your writing skills

17. Use AI to help but don't use it as a substitute

Here are more to get your readers' juices flowing.

Get started by following these 3 rules to make your writing better. HINT: Follow the "one idea" rule.

Or, you can just hire a ghost writer and take the credit, which I think damages your personal brand and credibility.

Faculty should be encouraged to do public writing and be recognized and rewarded by promotion and tenure committees for doing it as part of the scholarship of innovation and service to their communities.

The entire conceit of Lincoln’s short, 271-word address was that people would little note nor remember what he was saying. What counted to Lincoln was what the soldiers had done.

This took me about 30 minutes to write and rewrite this. If I had more time, I would have made it shorter.

Once you get into the habit, it becomes a lot easier. Who knows? Some day you might write a book.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack and Editor of Digital Health Entrepreneurship