The routine that made me a better writer.

Steal the exact writing regimen I used—and still use—to keep my skills sharp and build a $1M+ business

Author

Tommy Clark
July 28, 2025

Hey!

Welcome to Social Files—your no-BS guide to generating demand for your B2B product using social & content.

Hope you had a great weekend. Spent this one catching up on some reading and some much-needed sleep. I’m on book 5 of The Sun Eater series now—Ashes of Man. About 100 pages in, and it’s continuing the hot streak this series has been on for me. Phenomenal writing.

On that topic, today I want to walk you through the exact routine I’d follow to make myself a stronger writer. There are 4 simple steps.

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

The routine that made me a better writer.

Steal the exact 4-step writing regimen I used—and still use—to keep my skills sharp and build a $1M+ business.

Writing is a cheat code for life. It’s changed mine. There’s no way I’d have landed my dream job at a hot startup, right out of college—with zero traditional marketing background—without writing. There’s no way I’d have left that dream job a year and a half later to start my own agency had I not gotten good at writing.

To this day, writing well is the one skill I credit most to my success.

I want more people to use the power of writing. So today, I want to share the exact regimen I use to keep my skills sharp. I still follow this every day.

This routine is going to be helpful for two core audiences:

  1. Aspiring writers who either want to land a better job, or start freelancing on their own. If the former…we’re hiring. Skilled writers are in high demand.

  2. Founders who want to learn to write better for platforms like LinkedIn, newsletters, internal memos, etc. Writing well unlocks more distribution and allows you to better lead your team.

But writing well is hard. It takes practice—years of it. So you’d better get started now. The good news is, learning to write is simple. There are 4 components to the regimen I’d follow to develop the skill in 2025 and beyond.

(1) 15 minutes per day of Copy Work

Every aspiring writer should try Copy Work at least once. Kid you not: it’s one of the simplest ways to improve as a writer. Takes 15 minutes per day or less. Pretty much zero thought. Here’s how I’ve used it over the years:

“Copy work” is the practice of hand-copying a piece of writing you admire. Take a chapter from a book, an article, a sales page online, whatever. Write it out with pen and paper. That’s it.

The practice has its roots in classical education. For centuries, students in ancient Greece, Rome, and medieval Europe practiced by copying texts from great thinkers, poets, and orators.

More recently, Hunter S. Thompson hand-copied entire novels like The Great Gatsby, to “Feel what it was like to write a masterpiece.”

I’m sure there are a bunch of scientific reasons why this works that are more complex than I’ll make it here. But the exercise just helps you get a ‘feel’ for what good writing is like, as Thompson said. The flow. Word choice. Variation in sentence length, and structure. All that.

After sticking with copy work for a while, you’ll notice these same ‘good’ patterns appear in your own writing, without you trying. Copy work etches strong writing patterns into your subconscious mind.

Every morning after I get my cold brew, I sit down with a pen and my notebook, and do some copy work before I get into the rest of my agency work for the day.

The practice takes me 15 minutes or so. When I first started in marketing years ago, I’d hand-copy blogs & newsletters from creators whose writing I admired.

Now, I’m in the middle of writing my first novel when I’m not working on my agency projects, so I’ve been picking chapters from some of my favorite books to hand copy. The past few days have been spent on the gala scene in Golden Son by Pierce Brown (IYKYK).

I can’t think of a simpler way to sharpen your writing skills without much effort at all. Try it out for a few weeks and see how it works.

(2) Write at least one new piece per day.

Before I got into marketing, and into writing, I spent a few years in the health and fitness industry (fun piece of Tommy lore: my first business was a fitness coaching side hustle).

Something I’ve noticed: the practice of writing is a lot like the process of going to the gym to get in shape.

It’s far better to train at moderate intensity, but get in the gym four to five times per week, than it is to run your body into the ground once per week.

A few reasons why:

(a) You leave some gas in the tank every day. You're less likely to burn out, and fall off.

(b) Higher frequency is better for building the skill of lifting weights. If you only lift weights 1x per week, you're going to have a hard time getting the form down.

Yet, so many beginner trainees overextend themselves too early. They work out so hard they end up too sore to sit on the toilet—or worse, end up with a real injury that keeps them out of the gym. So their training regimen gets cut short, and their goals of a six pack disappear with it.

Writing is follows a similar, unfortunate pattern for many.

If you apply high intensity from Day 1, you're going to creatively strain yourself. Then writing isn’t fun. It becomes a chore. When writing goes from enjoyable practice to a hard slog, you stop. And when you stop, you don’t get better at writing.

So write something, anything, every day. Just keep the streak going. Crank out one finished draft daily. If you're reading Social Files, that ‘piece’ will probably be a LinkedIn post. But it doesn’t have to be. You could write a newsletter. An Instagram script. Whatever.

The key to consistent writing is to leave enough in the tank for you to show up again the next day. You should end the session wanting to keep writing. Not fully exhausted.

Don’t just trust me. Here’s some advice from bestselling novelist, Haruki Murakami: “I stop every day right at the point where I feel I could still keep going. That way, I can start the next day with momentum. If I exhaust myself, I might start the next day feeling empty.”

I do have one caveat here. I have found that often, some of my biggest leaps in writing ability come from short sprints of high volume. When I first got into content in 2020, I was brainwashed by Gary Vee into posting 10+ content pieces per day. It was insane. But it was also the best thing that’s every happened to my marketing career. That sprint altered the trajectory of my life.

I’m putting myself through another, similar sprint with novel-writing. My self-imposed word count quota is 1000 per day. As it stands, I’ve hit 25,000 words. Getting there. This takes me about two hours per day—which, in addition to my day-to-day as an agency CEO, is quite a lot.

But I feel myself progressing as a fiction writer on a daily basis. The progress is addicting. And stretching myself to my creative limit for a short duration accelerates that process.

I think of it like completing an exercise to failure. If you train to failure every set, forever, you're going to overtrain…and get hurt. But, done sparingly, high training intensity is a powerful lever for muscle growth. It’s all about the dose. As is writing.

(3) Read something every day.

Every time I interview a candidate for a Content Writer position at Compound, I ask this question; the answer tells me a lot about whether they'll be a great fit...or not.

"What's one book you've read recently that's stood out to you?"

It doesn't need to be marketing or business-related. I don't care if you've read Building A Storybrand or Purple Cow. But—and this isn't incredibly surprising—I've yet to meet a great writer who isn't also an avid reader.

I’m sure there are exceptions. But I’ve yet to meet someone whose writing impressed me who has said, “Yeah, reading is kind of boring. I just watch YouTube videos.”

Reading, especially fiction, gives you a sense for strong narrative. You get exposed to different writing styles. You understand how to create compelling characters (which is what we're doing with 'founder-led marketing,' when you think about it).

Great writers are built on a foundation of reading.

Here’s how my reading routine usually looks:

I’ll spend fifteen minutes or so in the morning reading while I drink my coffee and my brain wakes itself up. Then I’ll read again for as long as I can at the end of my night. I’ll usually fall asleep with my Kindle on in bed.

If I have any lulls in my day, I try **to pull out a book instead of Instagram. Emphasis on try.

Here’s the thing about reading: this isn’t something I force myself to do. I enjoy it! Reading is one of my favorite things to do—it just happens to make me a better writer, too.

I also don’t read many business or marketing books anymore. The last one of those I read was Day Trading Attention by Gary Vee, and I put that down halfway through. I spend far more of my time reading fiction. Science fiction and fantasy are my genres of choice.

Here are a few of my favorite recommendations:

  • The Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio. I'm on Demon in White (book 3 of the series) now. It's phenomenal. Some say book 1 is a bit slow—I enjoyed it, but can understand the opinion. Books 2 and 3 are insane.

  • Red Rising by Pierce Brown. I need an affiliate link for this one, given how much I shill it. I wish I could read this series again for the first time.

  • Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. This trilogy might have the best ending I've ever read.

Pro-tip: I’d recommend doing some reading before your copy work and subsequent writing. Get your brain going with some reading, warm up with copy work, and then write.

(4) Inundate yourself with writing materials.

If you want to be an exceptional writer, you need to be obsessed with the craft.

I mentioned that I don't read many marketing or business books. This is true—but I do listen to a lot of writing podcasts and watch a lot of writing YouTube videos.

These don’t replace the need for reading. Rather, they serve as supplemental material.

The single best recommendation I have here is to listen to How I Write by David Perrell. This is often the background soundtrack to when I do chores around the apartment or go out for a walk, should I not want to walk in silence.

In a way, doing this brainwashes you into better writing.

If you don’t find yourself wanting to listen to or watch materials on writing “outside of work hours,” you don’t really want to be a great writer.

Writers obsessed with work-life balance end up being mediocre freelancers who are on pace to get nuked by Chat GPT in t-minus two years.

Harsh. But true.

Here are some of my favorite episodes to start with:

Brandon Sanderson’s writing lectures are also fantastic. These are more oriented towards fiction; however, you can apply these same, timeless ideas to marketing content.

I’d also recommend listening to podcasts and reading materials specific to your industry. Some advice from advertising legend, David Ogilvy:

"Set yourself to becoming the best-informed person in the agency on the account to which you are assigned.

If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read books on oil geology and the production of petroleum products. Read the trade journals in the field. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, talking to motorists. Visit your client’s refineries and research laboratories. At the end of your first year, you will know more about the oil business than your boss, and be ready to succeed him."

In your case, this means listening to podcasts, reading newsletters, and chatting with AI. Same idea though. A well-researched writer creates better output.

Putting it all together

Here’s the regimen I would—and do—follow to improve my writing skills.

(1) 15 minutes of reading; preferably fiction or something you enjoy.

(2) 15 minutes of copy work. Rotate between marketing copy, fiction, articles. Preferably, whatever medium you're writing in that day.

(3) ~60 minutes of writing. Aim to get one new piece drafted daily. Focus on one skill in particular as you write.

This is your ‘minimum effective dose’ of writing training. To get the most out of this, I’d recommend stacking these habits. For me, a morning person, this looks like knocking these out in the first two hours after I wake up.

My alarm goes off at 5:45am, and once I grab my cold brew, I sit down to start my writing routine.

First, I’ll read for 15-20minutes. Right now, I’m ~100 pages deep into Ashes of Man by Christopher Ruocchio. After I get through a chapter or so, I’ll transition into my Copy Work. Today I kept chipping away at copying the gala scene from Golden Son (IYKYK). Once the caffeine from my cold brew hits the bloodstream and I’m warm from the copy work, I get into my drafting for the day. I’ll usually spend 60-90 minutes on proper writing.

By 8am, I’ve completed my writing practice for the day. If I have time later, I might do some more. But if nothing else, I’ve sharpened my writing skills before my team logs on and client demands take over.

Along with this concentrated block, add in other materials like the podcasts I mentioned during dead periods in your day, should you have the time.

You'll notice a lot of these habits are about pattern recognition. In my experience, becoming a better writer is about putting in enough reps to unconsciously recognize the patterns and the rhythm of strong writing.

This routine is simple. But it does take discipline.

But is that surprising? Really?

Anything worth having—like a writing skillset—takes effort, discipline, and consistency.

Try this regimen out for the next 30 days, and I would be shocked if you didn’t notice an improvement in your prose.

🗃 FILE CABINET

Here’s my favorite marketing and business content I bookmarked this week.

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, thanks for allowing me into your email inbox every week.

More from Social Files:

  • Read the rest of my essays

  • Work with my agency in 2025

  • Try my LinkedIn content writing SaaS

  • Steal my founder-led content templates

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark