Write the same idea to multiple audiences

One way to become a better writer is to take the same idea and try to get that idea across to different audiences.

If you have a few places that you write, you might think that if you write one idea in one place, that’s good enough. A journal entry has just yourself as the audience. A technical blog has an audience with certain predispositions. A book has yet another kind of audience.

However, when writing an idea in only one format, you’re losing out on the chance to become a better writer. You wouldn’t publish a personal journal entry in public, would you? But perhaps there are concepts in that journal entry that don’t just apply to you. There might be good lessons, or food for thought, for a wider audience—and for each audience, there’s a more effective way to get those ideas across.

In the process of figuring out how to get those ideas across to a particular audience, you develop the skills of reframing the same essential idea. It’s your writing style, your examples, your word choice that changes, but inside, it carries the same essence.

Delivering that essence effectively is what being a writer is all about.

There’s also no harm in playing around with the same idea multiple times, because as you work to deliver the same idea a second or third time, your own writing may have revealed to you new insights or perspectives that change the essence.

There’s a good definition of essence out there: “the permanent as contrasted with the accidental element of being”.

Your writing, living different formats and read by different audiences, has the accidental element that are the words on the page. The permanent element is the idea you’re tying to get across.