Write What You Want to Read
How to discover good ideas to write and tell them well
In software, the best way to create a good product is to be a user of your own product. If you need a product it is a sign that many people might also need it. By creating a product for yourself you can make sure that it is good for at least one person. If it is good for one people it is probably also good for many other people.
“If an idea is interesting to you it is probably also interesting to many other people.”
Same applies to writing. If you want to read about an idea you should just write it yourself. If an idea is interesting to you it is probably also interesting to many other people. Make your writing interesting and useful for yourself and it will also be good for others.
You might wonder how you can write about something you don’t know much about. Writing is one of the best ways to push yourself to think about an idea. As they say, the best way to learn something is to teach it. If you decide to teach something to someone else you need to learn it deeply. You need to think about it. You need to research it. The best writing is like teaching. Your goal is to enrich your readers’ life with good ideas and stories. You need to develop your ideas as you go along.
The best way to develop an idea is to start writing it. When you are writing you are not stuck with the limits of your short term memory. Since you are putting down ideas on the screen you do not need to worry about forgetting them. When you write down a good idea your mind knows that it is now safely tacked in a secure place so it can generate new ideas.
This is actually how “getting things done” framework works. Trying to keep track a list in your mind is stressful. You worry you might forget something important. By putting down a todo list you feel relaxed, and you are more likely to finish your tasks. If something new comes up you can just add it to your todo list and continue executing your tasks without an interruption.
Deciding to write about things you want to read is very helpful to a writer. It helps coming up with ideas to write about. Sometimes I’m reading a post and I suddenly wonder what the author would have thought about an issue. That’s a good cue to write it.
“We are intrinsically motivated to find out more about a topic that is interesting to us.”
There is a big difference between a topic that interests us and one that does not. We are intrinsically motivated to find out more about a topic that is interesting to us. We are more likely to come up with new ideas. If we are interested in a topic we are probably also interested in neighboring topics. We have domain knowledge about them. Some ideas that are obvious to us might be new to people who do not have the same domain knowledge.
We all belong to communities. For example, I am a startup founder; I am in software business; I am interested in writing more often; I am interested in writing better; I like sharing my knowledge and experiences. The topics that interest me probably also interest many other people in the communities I belong. I may not have any close personal connection with anybody who writes at Medium, but since I read their posts and they read my posts, and since we read similar things, we are connected.
Communities are built around ideas. We share ideas, doubts and questions. We read same things and we wonder same things. If I want to read about something there are probably many people in the communities I belong who also want to read the same things.
“The best writings ideas are the ones you want to read right now.”
The best writings ideas are the ones you want to read right now. If you have a need to read about something, it is a sure sign that many other also want to read it. So, don’t wait for inspiration. Write what you want to read.
