I never thought of myself as a creative person.
I thought of myself as someone who could “solve” something creatively. With the resources at hand. But I never thought of myself as someone who brings forth something from nothing.
This blog has been an eye-opening experience for me. It’s been six months now, and I have created something out of thin air every week. And it has actually been much easier than I thought. I am able to write because of my consistent stream of ideas.
I have been asked by multiple friends of mine, “how do you generate your ideas? How do you keep a steady stream of material to write about?”
That’s a bit of a complicated question. And each time I’ve answered it, I’ve actually learned more about the answer. Because it requires me to think about what I’m doing and why and how I’m doing it. Here’s my best attempt to answer that question, long-form.
Reading and Listening
For me, writing is directly linked to absorbing new material. The amount of writing ideas I have is directly proportional to how much new material I’m taking in. And by material, I mean mostly books, articles, and blogs. But I also mean podcasts, listening to people talk, and watching what’s moving people. Having my ear to the ground, socially. Watching what’s going on in technology, and markets, and social circles, and on the internet. And I also mean having normal everyday conversations with other human beings. All of these are idea sources. All of these have the potential to give me something to write about.
When I’m reading or listening, I’m constantly referring back to my current mental infrastructure. I’m seeing where things fit, where things don’t fit, where I need to adjust or build a new structure, and where I’ve made a brand new connection. And it isn’t just me - we all do this. This is the process of thinking.
And when I find that something has gripped me, startled me, or interested me, it usually means I have something to write about.
Taking Notes
So I’ll make a note in my Discord server. I don’t use a notes app for my note-taking - I actually use a personal server on Discord. This way I can access my writing notes anytime, from any device, any place in the world. Unless of course Discord servers are down, which is common enough to make me inordinately irritated. And in which case the entire internet is most likely having a sick day and I should just go walk outside anyway.
If I find that something has struck a chord with me mentally or emotionally, it’s pretty likely that there’s a writing idea there. Something that can be said. A new perspective that can be offered. My own personal, extra-spicy take on something I’ve just encountered and never thought about before. Or something I have thought about before, but I suddenly have better or more specific words with which to describe it or teach it.
So I’ll write down the topic. The skeleton of the message I want to convey. And I’ll leave it for later, so I can chew on it some more.
Or in some cases I’ll even type out a rough outline which I can refer back to and begin assembling the piece. If I have a few ideas/points/stories and don’t want to forget, I’ll type those out so I can pick them back up later.
Or, in other cases, I’ll have such a strong urge to write at that moment that I’ll just begin typing and begin to flesh out my writing piece right away. It’s either because I’m in Creative Sprint Mode, or it’s because I have already conjured the perfect way I want to word something and the only way to capture that is to type it all the way out immediately. There have even been times when I wrote an entire blog post start to finish in my Discord server, on my phone. Which is even funnier when I’m at home, because I could have just stood up and walked to my computer. Which would have made the typing ten times easier.
Whoops.
My ideas will often sit in my notes, waiting to be fully fleshed out, for weeks at a time. Right now I probably have 20 or more different topics/messages written out to varying extents in my notes. And I will work on whichever one catches my attention most any given week.
Language Itself
Language itself is probably half of why I write.
Something I have noticed that is extremely interesting to me is that there is so much value in having specific vocabulary. Having specific, practical language with which to describe something is what takes your communication from useless to useful. From everyday banter to game-changing power. To have useful vocabulary is to have people’s attention at your command. And I don’t mean that in a Hitler-esque, “the world is mine” kind of way. I mean that in a “you are your absolute best self when you have useful language to offer the world” kind of way.
I read a lot of posts on Ben Hunt’s website, Epsilon Theory. He and his guest writers are excellent at using specific vocabulary. And Ben himself is a master at creating useful, hard-hitting phrases which give very rich and salient meaning to narrative phenomena in our world. He has a way of describing things that make abstract social phenomena seem obvious and unmissable. And yet, without his writing, so many of these ideas simply would not be present in my head.
Because I did not possess the language to describe them.
That is the true genius of an excellent nonfiction writer. To give you words with which to describe something that you didn’t even know you already wanted to describe.
And that is part of what I want to offer. Both to myself, through the deep thinking that is required in writing, and to my audience, however small it may yet be. I want us both, all, to have specific and incredibly useful language with which to describe the things we want to describe. To have the best available tools for thinking about the world. To have the best mental infrastructure for interfacing with the things we encounter in the world.
At least once, usually even twice or three times, in each of my posts, I end up finding words for things that I didn’t even know I could find. Clever or funny words, or practical words. Words that give new life to something that is important. Or a compelling way to say something. And even if that itself was the only result of my blog, it would be worth it. Language itself is a tool that must be sharpened and upgraded.
Orwell showed us in 1984 how you could conceivably control people by narrowing the scope of their world - by literally taking away the language they had at their disposal to describe the world. I find that it’s a noble and worthwhile pursuit to try to broaden the scope of people’s world - to give them more language with which to describe it and interface with it.
So, some of my writing ideas are just compelling new ways to say things that I think of throughout my week of learning and absorbing.
The Voice
And perhaps the most important single factor in my writing is this: my voice. I know who I am as a person, and I know how I like to talk to people and teach people. I know the lenses I default to when looking at the world and analyzing things.
This is the one asset that gives me the most bang for my buck in developing writing ideas. I mean, think about it. What is conversation? It’s people with different experiences and value structures assessing what’s going on around them in real time, with their independent voices.
And if these two or more people are learning from each other, it’s because their voices are giving rise to new ways of thinking in each other. New ways of describing, new ways of feeling. That’s what meaningful communication is. The mutual exchange of ideas, experiences, and value structures. The mutual exchange of things we didn’t have before. The commerce of linguistic tools.
Once you have a voice, you can pretty much write about anything. All you’re doing is applying your own lens, perspective, and experience to something that is on your mind. That’s really all my writing is, at its core. It’s me trying to teach people by mapping real-world phenomena onto my own set of experiences and values.
Anybody Can Write
I am certainly no professional writer. I will be someday soon, but I’m not quite there yet. I have to do a better job of impressing you and finding a wider audience before I’m there. I’m working on it.
Anybody can do what I do. Really all I’m doing is letting the information around me pass through a press and come out Mine on the other side. I’m absorbing ideas and information, wringing them out like laundry until they’re desiccated down to the essentials, and dressing them up again as something that is Mine.
And it’s certainly not fraudulent or dishonest. No no. Good writing is not grifting. It’s honest. It’s using your own voice on the limited number of ideas that we keep recycling over and over and over again. It’s using your own idiosyncratic value structure to inform the world. It’s joining the conversation with a perspective that nobody else quite has.
And we can all do that.
If you want to find your voice, try writing. Try picking a topic once a week or once a day and doing a small exploratory exercise. Just write about your opinion or value or experience on that topic. See what comes out. See what really matters to you by having to put it carefully into words. In having to put things carefully into words, you will find that you really have to think about something.
Start small. Start with something in your wheelhouse. Something within your profession, or something you have had a very strong, life-informing experience with. Maybe some little thing that you’d like to teach somebody, or something you wish you could say to your father or your cousin or your best friend. And then put it carefully into words as honestly as possible. Bonus points if you can attach a little story or some humor to it.
You do this for long enough, you will find out what is important to you. You will find your own voice. You will find out, almost as a third party observer, who you really are.
And then you can use that to communicate better with the world.
Drink some water and then journal extensively about it,
JDR
“Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” - Mark Twain