You Have To Write The Book That Wants To Be Written

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” ― Madeleine L’Engle

One of my own favorite authors as a child (A Wrinkle In Time), makes a point that’s just as applicable to bloggers as to writers.

You have to write for your audience.

Of course, most of our initial ideas for articles and posts are going to come from our own experiences and observations and subconscious. But at some point, we have to ask ourselves, does anyone else care about this? Is there an audience out there that wants this to be written?

That’s why writing articles that answer questions you’ve already seen posted in forums and on social media can be so effective. You already know there’s an audience of some kind out there for that information.

With time and practice… and a growing audience that’s giving us feedback… we’ll get better and better at knowing in advance what topics and content will be well received. In the meantime, try these ideas:

  1. If you want to write a book, try testing the first chapter and getting feedback. One successful author wrote and released one chapter at a time to his growing email list, incorporating great feedback into the ultimate publication.
  2. If you want to write a blog post, first see what else has been written on the topic. Is there an overwhelming amount of content already? How will your article be different? Better? 10x better?
  3. Participate on social networks, within groups and communities, and pay attention to the questions being asked and discussions taking place. Those are rich sources of material and inspiration for most writers.
  4. Ask questions in your articles and pay attention to the responses in your comments, as those can indicate additional material that needs to be discussed.

And finally, taking a cue from another great author, Stephen King, always have someone in mind when you’re writing. A demographic or persona is OK, but even better is when you have a very specific person.

I shared a new post yesterday that was an answer to a specific person in a Google+ community. She’d asked whether it was a good idea to copy blog posts to LinkedIn. And because I have the “Blogger’s Mindset” I made sure to copy and paste my answer into Evernote so that I could turn it into a full article later and share it. Sure enough, she wasn’t the only one interested in the answer!

To paraphrase L’Engle, “You have to write the content that wants to be written.”

Cheers!