Make Grammarly your secret writing weapon
It helps me be a better writer but here’s how I also use it to be more efficient
We hear time and time again that writing on a schedule is vital for writers or content creators. And, most of us try to stick to that, blocking off time each day, pouring a coffee and sitting down to write.
Perfect!
Unfortunately, I often find that I’m immediately knocked off track because friction sets in right away. That’s a big problem because I usually have an hour each morning to write at most. After that, everyone else is up and demanding breakfast. Then I’m off to work. So I want to reduce the number of things that stand in the way of me putting words down.
What do I mean by friction?
Opening up the writing app (or, in my case, trying to choose between several options).
Checking my content calendar for the topic.
Looking for my notes for that piece.
Trying to remember where I left the draft.
By the time I get started, I can be on my second cup of coffee, and 15–20 minutes might have elapsed.
Or at least that’s how things used to be.
Enter Grammarly
Before I go on, this isn’t a promotional post or affiliate relationship. I just love Grammarly and have found it’s improved my writing — and efficiency — immeasurably. Pinkie swear.
You know Grammarly: the ads are everywhere, and it’s not necessarily new. You might already use it as a spell checker on steroids.
I tested Grammarly a few years back when it was new but then spent months cursing the app when it killed my spellcheck in Google Docs after I uninstalled it. Not a great start.
However, I gave it a second chance and I’m so glad that I did. Here’s how I think it helps writers who self-edit most.
- It helps you spot words that you overuse. My repeat offender is ‘so’ and, even though I’m aware of that, it’s easy to slip these in as a lazy way to make a point. Grammarly pulls me up when I’m overusing a word or phrase.
- It helps you select a level of complexity for your audience (General, Knowledgeable, or Expert) and then warns you if your writing looks too complicated. This is a great way to avoid long, multi-conditional, heavily caveated, sentences — the kind you find in academia — like this one.
- It gives you a sense of the overall tone and how engaging a piece is.
- The writing interface is clean and clutter-free (I’ll caveat that in a moment).
There’s also the standard spell check and some other tools, but I find these four functions have made the most difference to my writing. More specifically, these have allowed me to self-edit much more efficiently and effectively.
So (see what I mean) Grammarly’s helping me be a better writer, but how is it helping me get the actual writing done?
A while back, I heard an interview with Ramit Sethi when he talked about his writing process. He aims to remove as many barriers to starting the thing he wants to do as possible, and writing is no different. (There’s a transcript here where he talks about it. Search for ‘assistant’ on the page to jump to the exact segment.) He has his assistant set up his system but otherwise, it’s the same as what’s below.
1 — I block off regular writing time in my calendar.
2 — I create a content calendar or some pre-planned topic list.
I know. So far, so normal, but here’s where Grammarly fits in.
3 — I create a Grammarly doc for each topic.
4 — I drop the Grammarly document link into the notes section for each calendar reminder.
This way, when it’s time to write, the appointment reminder pops up, I hit the link and boom, I’m in the document. I’ve front-loaded all of the friction and can get right down to writing.
Sometimes, I’ve done the planning in my head and I just have the title written. In other cases, I might want to do something more complicated and I’ll have put together an outline in the document. Here’s one outline along with some other pointers I’ve found useful.
The main objective is to get me writing as quickly as possible, with minimum distractions. A crucial part of being distraction-free is to make sure you hit ‘hide assistant’ as soon as you open up the document.
The benefits I mentioned before are great, but only when you get to the editing stage. Turn all of that off to start with and enjoy a clean, clutter-free page on which to work. I like to write, review, and self-edit as much as possible before I open up the assistant, treating Grammarly as I would a real editor: I want to show them as good a first draft as possible.
One big caveat is that this only works if you’re going to be working online. If you prefer to keep distractions down and stay offline, or if connectivity is a problem, then Grammarly isn’t going to work. However, you can follow the same process with any word processing application that allows you to create a link to the document. It also doesn’t have to be your calendar: you could put the link into Asana or a to-do app like Remember The Milk. The critical step is linking the reminder to the exact place where you will be doing the writing.
I know that this might not seem like rocket science, but I’ve found it makes a massive difference to my work. Honestly, even if I don’t set a calendar reminder, just preloading the titles into Grammarly has significantly cut down the time between me firing up my computer and starting to write.
As I said, I like Grammarly, but this could work with pretty much any program where you can create a link to the document and put it into your reminder system. The nice thing is that Grammarly also makes writing and editing clean, simple, and fast.
If you’re looking for a way to squeeze a few extra creative minutes into your day and want a way to get started faster, I hope this helps.
Again, this isn't a promotion or anything like that: it’s a thing I do that helps me and I hope it can help you too.
