Advice from the Masters: Steve Pavlina

Dec 14, 2016 | Everything Else

Steve Pavlina ran a computer game development business before he switched to personal development and wrote Personal Development for Smart People. According to his web site, he’s also credited as author or co-author of over a hundred books, with more coming out every year. Prolific, huh?

Well, yes. Steve’s a fast writer, but all those author credits are the result of something more than writing a lot. In 2010, he “uncopyrighted” most of his work, leaving others free to publish it and incorporate it into their own work. Now you may be thinking that his writing may not be worth much, but I would point out that when the Association of Software Professionals added him to their Hall of Fame, they noted that “Steve has had a significant, lasting influence on others via his articles and postings.”

In 2010, Steve published a post on his site titled “How I Write.” It has a wealth of information, so it was hard to pick one bit of advice. I recommend that you read the entire post. Here’s the one piece of advice I chose for this series.

“I don’t outline first. I just start writing. It’s too difficult to create an outline when I don’t even know what I’m going to be writing. I have to see what flows out of me before I can figure out how to organize it.”

Want more? Check out the complete list of Advice from the Masters posts

If you want even more writing advice from writers, check out Jon Winokur’s blog, “AdvicetoWriters.”