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How To Stand Out From Other Writers · The Daily Writer

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey my friend, welcome to the Daily Writer, where we help writers become authors of their own lives.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I recently got a great question from one of my email subscribers named Misty, and this is what she said.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Hey Kent, I have a question that I'm sure keeps other writers up at night as well.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: How does one stand out as a writer from all the other writers in your field, especially with the influence of AI?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I know that AI can handle all of the basic and generic writing tasks, so we need to add soul and humanity to our writing.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: But what about standing out from other writers?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: How can we actually do that?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, again, Missy, thanks for the question.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a very, very timely topic that probably is relevant for all of us today because AI seems to be getting into basically everything.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: However, I want to set aside the issue of AI since that's really a whole separate conversation.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And let's focus instead on how to stand out from other writers.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to give you three very simple but important ways that you can do that.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, you have to produce a lot of material.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the reasons that I write a daily email and I do a daily podcast that's based on the same material as you're listening to right now, obviously.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: One of the big reasons why I do this on a daily basis is that I want to be in my readers' and my listeners' ears every single day.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it doesn't mean that everybody who listens to this show or reads my emails does it every single day.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Some people will listen to some episodes and ignore others.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just like some email readers will read some emails and ignore others, or maybe they'll read a bunch at once, or whatever the rhythm is really doesn't make any difference.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: But the idea is that I want to show up for them every single day.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And how they consume it and when they consume it is totally up to them.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to do my part and show up on a daily basis because I want to be in front of their ears and in front of their eyes on a daily basis.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: So part of my philosophy here is that I'm simply going to at work everybody else.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: All things being equal, the writer who shows up more often is the one who's going to get the most attention and the results.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give an example here.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Three of my ghostwriter friends, and as you can imagine, since I'm a ghostwriter, I have a lot of friends who are ghostwriters.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: I have three ghostwriter friends who have really fantastic newsletters that they send out.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're all incredible writers and even more incredible human beings.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is that when it comes to how often they send out these newsletters, their schedule is so erratic and so inconsistent that they really can't get any traction.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, all of three of these friends were sending these big long email newsletters that had a bunch of sections each, and they would be, you know, these big long emails.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I really love the material.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And all three of them, again, they're incredible writers, but they would do it for a few issues, and then they'll kind of fall off the wagon.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's been months since I've heard uh from two of them in terms of just receiving their emails.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the other one, it's been probably at least a couple of months.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really kind of heartbreaking because I want these newsletters.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: I love the writing that each of these friends do, uh, but they're just inconsistent in sending them, sending them out.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're kind of off my radar, if you will, just because they're kind of inconsistent in sending these out.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I believe that it's far better to produce something shorter and do it on a daily or a weekly basis over a long period of time than it is to produce something much longer and more robust, but only do it once in a while on an in on an inconsistent schedule.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the idea here is to be the guy or the gal who shows up to the party consistently without fail.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the key thing here is doing it without fail.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you from experience, I let my email list go dormant for a really, really long time.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it's only in the last few months that I've gotten this up and running, but I've gotten some great traction with it because I have shown up on a daily basis without fail.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that is item number one is that you have to produce a lot of stuff consistently.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Second of all, you need to write in your own voice.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this is honestly where you can get into a lot of trouble with AI, because if you start to rely on AI to produce your writing, it's gonna be soulless and it's gonna sound like all the other stuff out there that's written by AI, which seems to be consuming everything.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna be honest with you.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I try to be a really positive person, as you probably already know.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I have to confess that I'm so disheartened every time that I get on LinkedIn because so many people are making posts that are very obviously written by AI.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's no voice and there's no personality and there's nothing interesting about what they're saying.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, if you're a professional writer, you should be able to detect AI really, really fast.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a certain rhythm that AI writing typically has to it, where you can just tell that they didn't actually write it.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I have zero interest in reading that stuff because I know that they didn't write it.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or at least maybe they put in an idea and then they prompted ChatGPT or Claude or whatever to write the piece for them.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I just don't think that has any value and it's uninteresting on any level because they didn't actually write it.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, by contrast, whenever you get my emails or whenever you're listening to my podcast, you are getting me, Kent Sanders.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have my own way of writing and speaking.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the good news is that you do too.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got to lean into that because that is a huge secret weapon that you have.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Please, for the love of God, do not overly rely on AI to do your writing because it's going to strip away the very thing that makes you unique.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, third of all, you need a unique perspective on your topic.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the way that you find out what your unique perspective is, is to write about that topic a lot.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, see what I did there?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is just a quick note.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: I just said the way to find out what your unique perspective is, is to write about it a lot.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually a really poorly constructed sentence.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: So if an editor were looking at that in terms of grammar, he or she would say, can't, that's such a terribly written sentence.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: But that's actually the point.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I kept it in there because I want my communication to be conversational and authentic to the way that I actually communicate.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: You see, one of the things that we do as writers is sometimes we get really hung up on the construction of sentences and proper grammar and all that stuff.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that certainly has a time and a place, but there's also a place for having personality and zest and something interesting in your writing.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I really cannot overstate that because you have to show up with your own unique way of doing things.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that we should be sloppy, but I'm saying there are times when you set aside the conventions of proper grammar and all that stuff because you're trying to make a point and actually communicate in a way that really relates to people.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: So back to my point here about a unique perspective.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever you write about your topic a lot, you're going to discover what you think and what's actually resonating with people.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: For example, my overall theme is the idea of authorship, which is the state of taking charge of your own life and career.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's being the captain of your own ship.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that is my whole perspective in a nutshell.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: If I were to summarize everything that I write about, you can summarize it in that one single word, authorship.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: However, it's taken a lot of writing for me to figure out what I've really been trying to say this whole time.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why you also need to do a lot of writing on your topic.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Misty, thanks so much for the question.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I had not really thought about your question in quite this way.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate you asking it because by me inviting people to ask me questions and then responding to those questions, that actually helps me too.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, you could probably make that a number four thing on this list.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Is if you want to know how to stand out from other writers, let people ask you questions and have you respond to those things because then that helps you create more content and it helps you to do more writing and it helps you to refine your unique perspective on your topic.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, I hope that this is helpful for everybody who's listening.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: As always, I appreciate you tuning in.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Keep writing, keep showing up, and I'll see you tomorrow.