Shadowing Practice: How I write for 4+ hours a day with no distractions - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

Hello my friend.

⏸ Paused

Speed:

391 sentences

If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.

Hello my friend.

Today we're going to talk about the writing process.

Today I spent about five or six hours writing without any distractions,

without wanting to go on my phone,

without wanting to do something else,

just totally immersed in the page.

I got 12 pages handwritten and that was a pretty good day for me.

I write and perform short stories on the internet.

I have been writing consistently for a number of years now,

I think three years.

and that all started with a very basic journaling practice.

What I want to share with you today is how to start writing,

why you should, and yeah let's start with that.

My writing practice started as just journaling.

I bought a physical journal from the store,

I bought a pen, and I started just recording my thoughts.

My goal was to write stories but that was really hard.

Like it was just difficult to take an idea in my head and make it exist on the page.

I really overestimated, or I'm sorry,

underestimated the gap between idea and execution.

Very different things.

And so the only thing I was capable of writing in the beginning was just my thoughts.

What was going on in my world?

My feelings, what happened to me that day,

what I was thinking about,

what my goals were for the next day.

I just started writing it down.

It wasn't anything fancy.

It wasn't anything that I thought I would publish anywhere.

I just got used to the feeling of putting pen to paper,

the actual sensation of writing.

And over time, just by continuing to do that,

having a little ritual of journaling in the morning and sometimes at night,

I fell in love with it.

I started to crave it.

I would be on the train and I wanted to take out my journal and write what was going on.

Nothing crazy, just like what sounds was I hearing on the train?

What did I see around me?

What day was it?

What period of my life was I in?

And I think it's really important to touch on this

because most people stop writing or stop journaling because they have a really high expectation of

creating something right they want it to be a thing

that they can share or they want it to be good and it's like no That's not what it is.

It's a digestive process of your brain.

Does that make sense?

It's the same like you know you you take in information

and then you Expel it

and that's really what writing is in the beginning what journaling

is you're just getting stuff out of your body What needs to come out?

You are slowly training your ability to observe the world around you.

And that's a really important skill,

especially in today's day and age where people are really distracted, right?

The norm nowadays is to be caught up in your phone or to be caught up in some,

you know, something that doesn't matter.

Most people are not going about their lives actually paying attention,

trying to pay attention to what's happening.

Training your ability to pay attention is a very important skill

and and journaling in the morning and at night is a great way to do that.

It's hard to give advice on it because you really don't wanna be thinking about tactics.

You really just want to get the feeling in your body.

So I wake up in the morning,

I go to the gym,

I come back and I sit down and I fill pages for the first half of the day.

It's not perfect right away,

but then I kind of settle into it and I just stay patient with myself.

I notice my attention drifting,

thinking about something else, thinking about what the finished product is gonna be like.

Oh, how many views is this gonna get?

Oh, are people gonna like it?

What are my grandparents gonna say when I become successful?

I just catch that train of thought and I bring myself back to the page.

Not with punishment, not like,

oh, you're so bad at this,

you're so, you know, brain rotted.

No, just bringing myself right back here and I'm gonna keep writing.

It's a very calm, very loving self-talk.

Took some time to practice that.

But, you know, I wrote like two stories today.

I drafted two stories.

That feels great.

It's very important for me to share this because I've talked very generally about this practice for the last couple years,

replacing consumption with creativity, becoming a creator as an antidote to the consumption cheap dopamine lifestyle.

I am in it right now, like proper.

I am exercising, I am doing the thing that I've spent so much time talking about.

I am practicing what I've preached,

and that feels great, and I just wanna share that.

So I know this might be a little bit all over the place.

Bear with me, okay.

Let's talk about the writing process itself.

I've gotten some questions on this.

Like what, you know, I write by hand and I have some reasons I do that.

I wanna talk to you about how I do it.

So I write by hand first and foremost.

When I'm drafting a story,

specifically fiction, I wanna write by hand.

This is a practice I first learned from Neil Gaiman,

who's the author of American Gods,

the Graveyard Book, Coraline, as well as Chuck Palahniuk,

100

author of Fight Club, Choke,

101

Survivor, a number of other great books.

102

Those are two big inspirations for me.

103

And I discovered their advice a few years ago when I first started journaling.

104

They talk about writing by hand for a number of reasons.

105

Neil Gaiman writes by hand because there's no distractions.

106

He can go with a notebook into a cafe

107

or a public place and just sit and write

108

and on days where he doesn't feel like writing he doesn't have email to check,

109

he doesn't have YouTube to watch,

110

he doesn't have music to listen to.

111

He is able to to get himself bored.

112

Bored to the point that writing is more interesting than sitting and doing nothing.

113

The rule he gives himself is that you don't have to write,

114

you don't have to do anything,

115

but you can't do anything except for write.

116

And so that's how that goes.

117

And then Chuck Palahniuk, I haven't heard him talk extensively about it,

118

but he was on the Joe Rogan podcast famously,

119

and was talking about the writing process with Joe,

120

and Joe was talking about the writing by keyboard,

121

And he was like, oh,

122

that's not writing, that's typing.

123

Typing is a thing you do in airports or,

124

you know, when you can't do anything else.

125

Writing is by hand.

126

And there was something about that that resonated with me.

127

Because this is a little bit ooey-gooey-woo-woo.

128

But, like, there's something magical,

129

kind of sacred about writing by hand.

130

It's just a very human thing.

131

I think there's magic that happens when you do that.

132

There's something about the tactile sensation, right?

133

Of feeling an actual pen,

134

the instrument in your hands as you're writing.

135

you know, feeling the words make themselves.

136

I like it a lot.

137

And right now I'm using a fountain pen that I really like.

138

I fill it up with a little ink bottle and I write in these big Moleskine notebooks.

139

None of this is sponsored,

140

although I would love to partner with that because I love their products.

141

But yeah, it just feels like magic when you're doing it.

142

That's a good reason.

143

Um, when I was a child,

144

hang on, let me grab my pencil.

145

So when I was a kid,

146

I, um, would spend hours in my room thinking up stories and twiddling with,

147

like, a little pencil.

148

At first it was like a wand,

149

like a magician's wand, but then it became a pencil, like this.

150

And I would, like, make little figure-eight motions and become hypnotized by the images,

151

by the vision, the sight of the pencil waving.

152

Anyway, I think it's a form of stimming.

153

I don't know, but I would do that and I would imagine stories

154

and I would go deep into my imagination and I would spend hours doing this as a child.

155

This is what I did instead of playing video games.

156

Like I just genuinely wanted to be doing that.

157

By writing by hand, by using this pen,

158

I tap into that a little bit.

159

So I get sucked into the story,

160

sucked into what I'm writing through the tact,

161

the combination of the sensation of writing and then the actual,

162

the visual stimuli of the words appearing on the page.

163

This is so in the weeds.

164

I don't know how relevant this is for you,

165

but like that's, that's how I start.

166

I crave the feeling of pen on paper because I've spent so much time doing it.

167

There is an emotional release that happens.

168

There's like, there's satisfaction that comes from bringing your ideas out of your brain and onto the page.

169

And then you combine that with the tactile sensation and your brain creates an association.

170

So you associate the writing sensation with the thinking and literally bringing your ideas to life,

171

which is magic, right?

172

And then you become addicted to doing magic.

173

Okay, so that's the drafting process.

174

When I'm drafting, it's a fast, furious thing.

175

I want to get the idea out of me as quickly as possible.

176

I try to do it without editing,

177

without, you know, I'm not thinking,

178

I'm not working backwards at all.

179

I just keep moving.

180

I take the idea and I try to take it to its natural end as quickly as possible.

181

That's an idea I got from Joyce Carol Oates,

182

who's one of the most accomplished story writers of all time.

183

And really, I'm so inspired by how prolific her career has been.

184

She just writes with a blue-collar work ethic, like constantly.

185

Writes eight to ten hours a day, every day.

186

Doesn't talk about it, just does it.

187

And she talks about finishing your first draft very quickly.

188

I recommend this for anyone who's writing.

189

No matter what it is,

190

whether it is a short story or an essay you're doing for school,

191

school get the first draft done quickly don't try to get

192

it perfect don't try to perfect the first paragraph right away just get the rough draft

193

and then go back and edit it it just really helps

194

because once you start editing you start second guessing yourself you get too much in your head

195

and it's you you can't really you lose the magic a little bit

196

because you're trying to you're in editing mode you're in architect

197

mode as opposed to magician mode i'm hoping this makes sense to to you,

198

Ray Bradbury, author of, what did he write?

199

Bunch of things.

200

He wrote Fahrenheit 451, good lord.

201

And a number of other things that I'm blanking on right now.

202

Number of short stories.

203

Part of his advice is don't think, right?

204

When you're drafting, when you're writing the first draft,

205

don't think, sit down and feel.

206

That's what writing is, is it's honest feeling.

207

Now this obviously is different if you're a technical writer,

208

if you're writing a technical document with a series of steps,

209

you're not gonna feel your way through that.

210

But for a personal essay or something that requires your perspective,

211

your humanity, which is super important to write,

212

we need that in the age of AI.

213

You gotta just feel it out first and then you can make it make sense later.

214

That's the drafting process.

215

I feel, I feel, and then I take that draft and I transcribe it into my computer without thinking.

216

So I'm still not editing yet.

217

I literally just write word for word everything that I wrote.

218

This is between seven and 10 pages of drafted material,

219

so I get some good typing practice.

220

I'm not thinking at all,

221

I'm thinking about other stuff as I'm doing this.

222

Or sometimes, actually no that's not true.

223

As I'm typing it out into my computer,

224

that's the first time that I read back through what I just wrote.

225

So I'm slowing down now,

226

I'm like reading the sentences and noticing what's gonna have to change

227

and what my feeling is on the second pass through it and I don't change anything yet,

228

except for like a period here,

229

maybe a word change here and there.

230

But the bulk of it,

231

I'm just typing it out,

232

getting the material loaded in.

233

So I've like mined the raw material,

234

the raw ore, and now I'm gonna carry it over into the facility,

235

it's a metaphor, and then I'm gonna refine it,

236

and that's the editing process, the refining process.

237

And that's where I am editing.

238

And this part is currently,

239

I wanna say least favorite,

240

it's just, it's not, it's harder.

241

It's probably the hardest part,

242

is taking this raw material that I've felt and intuited out of my subconscious and working it,

243

reworking it, performing surgery on it,

244

moving this piece over here,

245

expanding this part, shortening this,

246

trying to read, and you just read it over and over and over again from the perspective of a reader,

247

trying to hold the reader's hand as you go through the draft.

248

You know, making it fun,

249

making it not boring, making it exciting,

250

taking people on a journey.

251

There's so much of that.

252

Like it just is, it's a very,

253

it's a pretty tedious process.

254

And it requires a great deal of focus.

255

If the drafting process is like fast and kind of in the moment and breathless almost,

256

the drafting is like, it's like,

257

it's more like, I don't even know what to compare it to.

258

I don't do many other things.

259

It's just tedious, you know, it's like coding probably.

260

You like have to just get it right.

261

And there's still some feeling in that.

262

There's still rewriting and you know,

263

Sometimes you're expanding sections out and you really see what the story wants to be.

264

This is an idea from George Saunders who's been a phenomenal inspiration for me,

265

one of the great short story writers of our time,

266

is that you can't really control what a story is.

267

You might have an idea for what it needs to be,

268

or I'm sorry, what you want it to be in the beginning,

269

but you have to accept that it might be something completely different.

270

The story that you're bringing out of your subconscious mind might have a life of its own.

271

It might be something completely different

272

and it's your job as the writer to get out of the way and let it become what it needs to be.

273

You have to kind of hold its hand as it grows up and becomes this living,

274

breathing thing that might be very different.

275

So you might have an idea of how you want it to end

276

or what a certain way you want it to go or the specific moment you're building to.

277

And it might not, it might feel forced to do that.

278

And when you notice that,

279

when you notice that you're trying to force it into a box that doesn't work for it,

280

you have to take a step back and ask yourself what the story wants to be.

281

You'll notice when you're trying to force a story or an essay or something to be something it's not

282

It's no longer fun.

283

You feel all of this pressure and you don't feel any magic

284

And I think that's a really important point is

285

when you feel yourself distanced from the magic the magic

286

that you felt When you were drafting it's this very childlike excitement of getting this idea out of you

287

When you start losing that you need to pause because if you're losing it,

288

the audience is going to lose it.

289

Your reader is going to lose it for sure. So pause.

290

Look at the story again.

291

What does it want to be?

292

So I do that in the editing process as well.

293

The editing process lasts anywhere from like a day to a few days.

294

I typically work very fast and that's because I know that I just want to get stories out quickly.

295

I don't think that a long editing timeline will make them that much better at the skill level I'm at right now.

296

I think I will learn a lot more by producing a lot of stories very quickly and improving with each one.

297

So as opposed to raising my ceiling and becoming as making a story as good as it possibly can be,

298

I'd rather raise my floor by producing as many stories as I can within reason while still making them,

299

you know, pretty good.

300

And the raw material getting better over time.

301

That's the working theory.

302

So I edit pretty quickly.

303

And then also there's a comfort in that, which is

304

that even though the deadlines can be pretty stressful wanting to

305

put a story out in over the course of three days or a week.

306

Like it's stressful because the deadline is looming but it's nice because you know that once the deadline's over it's done.

307

You can move on.

308

So sometimes you're chasing the excitement of a story being something really special

309

and sometimes you're just chasing the relief of it being over and that's fine because your feelings are a very,

310

they're a shifting thing.

311

You know in the moment sometimes you're like I don't like this.

312

I think this is really bad,

313

but if you just stick with it and just kind of get the story over the hump,

314

get it done, get it finished,

315

get it out to the world so that you can move on to the next one,

316

you find that it actually turns out really well,

317

or people really like it.

318

I've had that experience a number of times over the last 20-something stories I've written and performed and published.

319

Sometimes the work you think is horrible performs really well,

320

which is interesting, or people resonate with it.

321

So you never really know.

322

That's why where I'm at in the process now,

323

I'm just trying to finish as much as I can and get it out and that's my process right now.

324

I Thought I would share that in case it's helpful If you have any other questions about the process my current process specifically,

325

let me know I think the last point for today's little

326

video journal is just talking about the concept of the creative athlete Which I talk about all the time now No,

327

I don't I've talked about it a few times and we're gonna talk about it today Today,

328

becoming a creative athlete, this is what we're aiming at.

329

For those of us who are tired of consuming mindlessly,

330

who are tired of being consumers in the age of cheap dopamine and endless content that's only going to get worse,

331

we need an alternative.

332

We need something to give our attention to.

333

And for a long time I didn't know exactly what that was until,

334

like I've laid out in this video,

335

I discovered, painstakingly built over time,

336

a process that works for me.

337

a creative athlete is the option.

338

You find a creative practice that fires you up,

339

that you enjoy, that channels your soul,

340

and then you practice it the way an athlete practices their sport.

341

You show up and you train.

342

You understand that there is a great deal of challenge and rigor that goes into this.

343

It's not just playtime all the time.

344

It's like you have to show up and work out.

345

There is a very direct parallel between creative work and physical training,

346

you know, and getting in good shape.

347

Both practices are very important in my life,

348

and I think as a creative athlete You should have both.

349

So, you know, training for me resistance training calisthenics bodyweight training.

350

I love that.

351

That's a big part of my life That's how I feel like it,

352

you know, healthy and strong and it plays right into the creative stuff as well

353

When I sit down to write that's like my creative workout for the day

354

And I really give myself to that and not every workout is perfect.

355

Some days are stronger than others.

356

Some days I break personal records I would say today was like a PR day in terms of writing.

357

This is all over the place.

358

Good Lord.

359

Yeah, so everything I've talked about today is part of being a creative athlete.

360

If you're here for the journey,

361

I just am inviting you to join me.

362

This is it.

363

This is what we're aiming at.

364

This is what we're going to give the next 10,

365

20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years of our life to,

366

is finding a replacement to consumption,

367

to endless consumption and entertainment and external satisfaction, short-term gratification.

368

An alternative that is better than that,

369

which is, in my view, is creative work.

370

And then sharing that creative work.

371

And then eventually getting to the point that we're doing this in person,

372

around a fire, or in a room,

373

in a physical space where we can perform and share stories.

374

That's what humanity is all about.

375

I think that's deep down what we want.

376

We want to share this human experience with each other.

377

And we've become so distanced from that in the last decade

378

or so with this technology that we haven't been psychologically prepared for.

379

So a lot of it isn't our fault,

380

but it is our responsibility,

381

you and me, to figure it out now in the modern age so that our kids have something better to live for,

382

so that we have something better to live for.

383

I can tell you confidently from the front lines,

384

I am getting closer to it every day.

385

I love what I'm doing.

386

I'm grateful for it.

387

I'm grateful to have you here for the journey,

388

and I am cordially, warmly,

389

ecstatically inviting you to join me.

390

I'll see you on the front lines.

391

Have a great day.

TRENDING

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

☕ Buy us a coffee

ShadowingEnglish remains 100% free thanks to your support. Server and AI costs are high — your coffee keeps us going! 🙏

Donate via PayPal

ShadowingEnglish.com – English Shadowing Practice

Speak English fluently using the Shadowing technique. Listen to native YouTube videos, repeat sentence by sentence, and build real pronunciation and fluency — used by IELTS learners worldwide.

Shadowing Practice: How I write for 4+ hours a day with no distractions - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

Popular

About This Lesson

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

Practice Tips

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing Practice: How I write for 4+ hours a day with no distractions - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

Download App

About This Lesson

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

Practice Tips

What is the Shadowing Technique?