So You Want to Become a Better Writer?

Part 7 | Lessons from Jerry Seinfeld

In my first post in the series, I recommended auditing the Coursera program, Good with Words: Writing and Editing Professional Certificate. I’m starting with Course 1, Writing and Editing: Word Choice and Word Order.

Lessons from Jerry Seinfeld

Jerry Seinfeld needs no introduction. However, I’m a bit of a late bloomer. I’ve only recently started watching Seinfeld the show. All nine seasons are on Netflix right now. Better late than never, I guess. LIke most of you, I was acquainted with the man, the comedian, and the show, but I came at it backwards. I started to pay attention when Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee came out.

During a podcast interview with Tim Ferriss I was left with the feeling Jerry considers himself a writer first and foremost. Jerry still does a writing session every day. His process is simple: “You can’t do anything else. You don’t have to write, but you can’t do anything else.” And that hasn’t changed to this day.

Jerry writes about what’s in front of him. He’ll have 15 to 20 pages in various stages of development. He also has a smaller book of random things — like when a cell phone call drops and most people say, “I don’t know what happened there.” Jerry uses that to write a half a page of…