At some point, you’ve wanted to write more.
You started and eventually stalled, feeling sidetracked by one or other competing priority.
Here’s where a writing process can make all the difference.
That’s the message from Seth Godin in his book, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work.
Godin knows what he’s talking about: he’s an entrepreneur and marketer who still manages to find time to publish a new blog every day. I’ve looked at Godin’s writing productivity on this blog before.
Below, I look at how we might apply his ideas to the writing process.
1. Don’t Wait for Writing Inspiration
You can slip into a inspired, focused state whenever you want to — all you have to do is start writing.
Godin speaks about the flow state we enter when we do engaging work:
“We’ve all experienced it, and once we do, we itch to do it again. That moment when distractions fade away, when the narrative backs off and the chatter dies down, when we’re directly engaged with the work.”
In the bestseller Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes flow like this:
“…the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”
I used to believe I needed to wait to feel inspired to write anything. That was a lie. You don’t need to wait for inspiration to come and meet you.
“Flow is a symptom of the work we’re doing, not the cause of it.”
This reminds me of the famous William Faulkner quote about writing inspiration:
“I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.”
The takeaway here is just to sit down and write. Confession: I hardly feel like writing when I start. Writing is difficult. You’re challenging yourself. You’re critiquing your own ideas, and looking for the words to best express your arguments.
One way to build a writing habit is to start small. Begin only with a sentence or even a word. Behaviour scientist BJ Fogg said the best approach to building lasting habits is to make them incredibly easy to begin.
2. Ask the Magic Questions
Gaining clarity into your audience and purpose can guide your efforts.
We all know we must understand our reader and our writing goals.
Godin sums it all up in two simple questions:
- What’s it for?: what’s the goal of your post
- Who’s it for?: who’s your ideal reader
There are different ways to achieve this kind of clarity. I wrote about audience research in this content development post.
Writer Henneke Duistermaat suggests asking the following questions:
- Who are you writing for? What are their concerns and goals?
- What action do you expect your reader to take? What is the purpose of your content?
- Why should they believe you? What makes your content credible? A track record? Research?
3. Embrace a Writing Process
I used to write because I wanted engagement: I was yearning for the views and comments.
My fixation with results is related to our “outcome-focused culture”, said Godin.
“Lost in this obsession with outcome is the truth that outcomes are the results of process. Good processes, repeated over time, lead to good outcomes, more often than lazy processes do.”
Focusing on the process frees us from the dependence on likes or views. It also shifts the conversation from what we intend to take from our reader to one of how we seek to serve our audience.
This makes me think of Simon Sinek’s comments about a giving mindset and a taking mindset.
“You have to show up with a giving attitude…the problem is the number of people who show up to take, to get…People ask a question and they say, ‘You’ll have to buy my book.’ Or you can just tell me the answer because you know the answer because you wrote the book…It’s a taking mentality. The best speakers…all of them are there to give, none of them want anything from anybody, not even your approval.”
4. The Paradox of Process and Mediocre Work
There’s a caveat to all of this, though.
Although we must ignore outcomes, we need to make sure we’re doing good work. Good work here is defined as work our target audience comes to value.
“…there is a difference between good work and not so good work. There’s a point to our effort, and the change we seek to make involves empathy for others, not just the solipsism of doing whatever we feel like.”
I remember pitching for guest blogs and writing gigs and getting no responses. After doing an honest assessment, I had to be honest: my writing portfolio was lacking.
For the next year, I commited myself to a writing routine that included:
- Reading work I admired
- Rewriting articles I liked in my own words
- Publishing a blog post once a week
5. Everyone gets Imposter Syndrome
Godin has a great track record. He’s started businesses that have sold for millions of dollars. His books are bestsellers, and his blog is one of the best marketing sites.
Yet, even he still gets imposter syndrome, and he doesn’t think that’s a bad thing.
“I feel like an imposter. At least when I’m doing my best work.”
“…I feel like an imposter often. That’s because my best work involved doing things that I’ve never done before.”
6. Speak to Someone About Your Ideas
Learning to spot your best ideas is a skill, writes Godin.
That means you can get better at it:
“It’s possible to get better at this pre-filtering. By doing it out loud. By writing out the factors that you’re seeking, or even by explaining to someone else how your part of the world works.”
You can even talk to yourself.
In this article for Psyche, Nana Ariel writes that ideas are often abstract but can be fully developed in speech.
“Speaking out loud…allows the retrieval of our thoughts in full, using rhythm and intonation that emphasise their pragmatic and argumentative meaning, and encourages the creation of developed, complex ideas.”
7. Do the Reading
What do the best writers have to say about their techniques?
Godin encourages people to understand the key themes and topics in their domains.
This helps you to better understand the line of reasoning and to challenge the line of reasoning.
I used Feedly to curate and consume content from the best writing and online sites.
8. Writer’s Block is a Myth
It’s up for debate whether or not writer’s block actually exists. But if you’ve ever felt stuck, writer’s block was real to you in that moment.
The solution is just to start writing. I’ve used the freewriting technique before to help me write better.
“It’s hard to get blocked when you’re moving. Even if you’re not moving in the direction that you had in mind that morning.”
9. You Become a Writer by Writing
Changing your life begins with changing your habits. Author James Clear writes about identity-based habits in this blog post.
Godin writes:
“Do the work, become the artist.”
On blogging, specifically:
“Blog every day. It’s easy, it’s free, and it establishes your identity long before the market cares about who you are and what you do.”
He encourages people to post publicly.
“Writing is a universal solvent for creatives. Painters, entrepreneurs, therapists, circus acts-each of us can write our story down, a permanent record of how we see the world and how we will change the world.”
In sum, you make yourself into a writer by writing.
