To Be A Prolific Writer, Draw Inspiration From Everywhere

But be careful..

“A LinkedIn Personality with 2.3M Followers Blocked Me Before She Died Last Week”

That was a headline written by a famous writer a few years ago.

Besides the fact that it was egregious for this person to write about that, there’s a lesson to be learned here.

You can write about more than you think.

You COULD write about anything that happens to you.

Anything Can Be Written About

“Tom, I don’t know what to write about!”

I hear that a lot.

The truth is, the people who say that simply don’t know where to look for ideas. And that’s okay.

I write two daily Substack Notes first thing in the morning. One for my writing-related profile and one for my personal profile. How the hell am I doing it?

Well, I just sit and think about what’s happened to me recently.

My writing process looks like this:

1. Sit

2. Stare at the wall for 20 minutes

3. Think about what I’ve done recently

4. Come up with idea

5. Repeat

Anything can be fodder for an article.

Now, SHOULD anything be fodder for an article? That’s a more important talking point. I’ll talk on that later.

For now, I want to give you a list of things you can use to turn experiences into articles.

10 Places You Can “Mine” To Make Articles

1. Anything you watch — Movies, TV shows, Youtube videos.

2. Anything you read — Articles, Books, Textbooks

3. Conversations — Talks with your parents, siblings, friends, or significant others.

4. Memories — Reminiscing during the day? Write about it.

5. Stuff That Happens To You — I got cut off in traffic today. What happened to you?

6. Stuff You Do — Do you partake in Jiu-Jitsu? Recently taken up cooking? Write about what you’ve learned.

7. Relationships — Talk about your love life.

8. Stuff That’s Happening Currently — Oooh current events.

9. Anything That Angers You — What makes you mad? We want to know.

10. A Comment Some Guy Left You On Facebook — Ok, boomer.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. You’ll soon find out that anything that happens to you can be worth writing about.

A 5-minute argument with your significant other while you make coffee could be an article. Should it, though?

Clearly There’s Limits Here

There’s a way to help people save face when you write about them.

Change the details.

Change what actually happened ever so slightly.

For instance I’ve seen writers change the gender of their “friends” to maintain an aura of mystery. If it’s a man you’re talking bad about, change the gender in the story. Your friend will never know you’re talking bad about them.

All of this seems slimy, doesn’t it?

There’s a fine line between being honest about something and using honesty as a lightning rod to get more views.

In the first instance it’s noble because you’re doing it for honesty’s sake. In the second instance it’s not so noble because you’re weaponizing honesty to goad people into viewing your article.

It’s almost like there’s a race between writers to exploit every last dirty thought or personal story they have just to make some money. There’s no shame anymore. Money over pride.

It used to be courageous to be honest in your writing.

It’s not courageous, though, if you’re not scared of publishing it anymore.

It’s not courageous if you’re staring at your embarrassing story with drool running down your chin waiting to publish it because you know it will get views.

Fear is a crucial component to courage. Without it, it’s not courage.

In this case, it’s just greed.

I think a lot of writers are wising up to the fact that brutal honesty is like a highly effective form of clickbait. So they dramatize every single moment from their lives to get more clicks.

It’s as if everything in life is viewed through the lens of “How can I turn this into content?”

I can imagine a writer having an argument with someone and going ‘Good, good, let the hate flow through you — it will be good for my next article,’ in their head.

That’s the insane outer limit to this.

No, you shouldn’t look at everything in your life as a writing opportunity to make a ton of money. There’s vloggers I’ve seen who vlogged their parent’s death and funeral for views. That’s wrong!

There needs to be a limit, so please keep that in mind when opening up your mind to the possibility of writing about EVERYTHING.

On most occasions, it’s fine to do that. However, I won’t be so naive to say there’s NEVER an occasion it’s not OK.

Because that wouldn’t be very honest of me.

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