Every few months, I fall into a writing pattern. I like to call it, “My writing soul is dead.”
I don’t know how to describe it besides saying that my writing feels like a lost soul. I’ve lost my voice. I’ve lost my sense of purpose. Kinda like Spiderman in the second movie of the first trilogy (We know there are way too many Spiderman movies). I need to rediscover my writing weirdness.
I overthink it. I spend too much time thinking about what to write instead of writing with my soul. Math is math. Writing is writing. You can’t solve writing. You have to escape logic and let the words flow freely.
You need to find your writing weirdness to escape the evils of writing. This is how I rediscovered mine.
Create a List of Your Favorite Things to Write About
For me, writing is about reminders. I write to remind myself of the ideas I love sharing. I write because it feels good to express myself, especially around the things I’m learning.
You have to find and ignite your passion for writing. Create a list of your favorite books and articles. Find the best stories you’ve ever written. Compile a collection of the things that remind you of why you love writing.
This is my list:
- Articles by Bill Simmons, Paul Graham, and James Clear
- Books: The Third Door, The Road, and When Breath Becomes Air
- Speeches: Neil Gaiman’s Commencement Speech and Bill Gurley’s Runnin’ Down a Dream Speech
Write From Conviction, Not Restriction
In school, we were taught to write around restrictions. We learned what we couldn’t say. We learned to write a five-point essay that could only include certain sources, and it had to be on a particular topic.
When you write from conviction, you write from the heart. You write because you need to get it off your chest. There’s meaning behind every sentence.
The internet has given you the opportunity to leverage your ideas. You have the opportunity to write about your ideas. Get feedback. Share some more. And do it over and over again until you have no more ideas.
Share those ideas with conviction. Write about them. Explain them. Show the world why they should care about your ideas. If you care, your readers will care.
Keep Writing Beyond All Hope
Writing is about perseverance more than anything.
You’ll feel defeated when you first start writing. You’ll either feel like nobody is reading it, or you’ll feel everybody is reading it and nobody likes it. Every writer feels this way in the beginning.
You have to persevere through the doubt. Because perseverance makes the writer like it makes the entrepreneur, the athlete, and the artist. They are what they are because they stuck with it.
I keep writing through the soul-sucking timeline of writing. The part of your life where you don’t feel like writing but you know you must! You must fight back.
Write about your weirdness. Write about what energizes you. Write to defeat the soul-sucking time vortex that wants to keep you stagnant.