31 Ways to Never Say These Words Again — “I Don’t Know What to Write About!”

A cheat-sheet for writing consistent and engaging stories

Michael Thompson
The Startup
Published in
14 min readMar 30, 2021

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My biggest challenge isn’t coming up with ideas, it’s fighting to find the best ones. When I started writing four years ago, I never thought this would be the case as publishing 10 posts felt like it might as well be 8,732.

But it’s true what they say — “The more you write, the easier it becomes!” — as much like our verbal conversations, the doors our written word open can take us down endless rabbit holes.

The key is starting.

And then waking up each day and starting again.

I’m a big believer that my friend Jake Daghe is right — not having a smartphone for a good chunk of my life gives me a massive edge over younger writers as my curiosity took me all over the globe before technology began to take everyone’s attention.

That being said, as still a relative newbie to the creative world, to get inspiration, I still have to cheat. In fact, I cheat a lot. And I do that by doing any one of the 31 things below.

Set a goal for publishing only one article a week

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Michael Thompson
The Startup

Co-creator of two cool kids • Storytelling Coach •.Fast Co., Insider, Forbes • Free storytelling guide here: https://bit.ly/3h1KZeT