Alpha Strike, Wuju Style and Highlander all offer an opportunity to annihilate your lane. Before you Q, make sure to activate wuju so that every hit has wuju applied to it. After that, use your ult so that your can quickly refresh your Q, and which by then the champion should be dead. If the enemy has a lot of CC, your ult will be very useful to counter it, for example Ashe is CC all over the place, and once they think you're a goner, ult and beat em up. Meditate is a matter of keeping you in the game, and it can be a very dangerous buffer between you winning or losing the game. Especially don't max it out when you can spend it on other abilities.

Get there first! Stay in the middle bush, and ward the one closest to the enemy. Don't try to 1v1 until level 6, because most top-laners can easily take you down, especially Garen's Decisive Strike. Try to stay out of combat and get gold and xp, and whatever you do never towerdive pre-level 6!!! (Emphasis on never). Try to get roughly 1000-1500 gold before coming back.

Buy things that build into the core items, and bring along a couple of health potions, because why the hell not. You should be fairly high level now, and your Alpha Strike and Wuju Style should keep enemy champions at a quite safe distance. Your Q and E will do much more now.