Write to Your Past, Present, and Future
When searching for an audience for your writing, consider this…
Dan Koe in his excellent “The 2 Hour Writer” course, gave me the following insight. It’s helping me. Perhaps it will help you.
If you are trying to discover who you are really writing for, try this:
Write to your past self.
Then your present self.
Finally, write to your future self.
Don’t worry about wording or grammar. Just write as if you’re talking to or with yourself.
This doesn’t mean that you should not focus on your potential audience.
But it does mean that those potential readers will relate to and directly benefit from what you have experienced and learned on your writing journey.
Many of them are going through or facing challenges you face.
Many of them are like you.
They need your insights.
“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” ―Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
Ok, let’s write…
To Your Past Self
(You might write something like the following.)
Don’t be afraid to write things down as they come to you.
Your subconscious mind has lots of stuff waiting to see the light of day.
Let it out.
Write it down.
Don’t censor yourself.
This writing is only for you… but potentially can become the seed for new writing to be published or not.
Take time while you’re young to travel and see as much of the world as you can.
Take advantage of having a body and mind ready, willing, and able to see the world and begin to understand what’s out there.
Don’t wait until you’re old when your body may not be as ready or able to do what you can do right now while you’re young.
What you do and experience when you’re young will become material and fuel for your writing.
You need that fuel.
Stock up on as many sights and sounds and experience as you can.
“Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.” — Mel Brooks
To Your Present Self
Focus on what is the most important thing for you to do today. Your life is a series of todays, one after another. Use the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and experiences of the past and your present to inform you writing and your activity.
You are an explorer, a thinker, a doer. Your form of doing is writing what you know, what you suspect, and what you can imagine.
It’s your thing — this writing thing, the ability to put words on paper or screen that say and express what you think and want.
You’re an individual with a unique set of experiences, ideas, and proclivities that make you valuable to potential followers, readers, customers, and clients.
You have things to tell them about life and the reality of this time and its potential for tomorrow.
“The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.” — Zora Neale Hurston
To Your Future Self
What you did back when you were writing about your present and past selves set you free to continue growing and developing your craft and outlook.
The future is got here day by day, one way or another.
Now you can celebrate what you achieved.
And still able to add to your body of work and to your legacy.
Today is the sum of all your past todays.
Fortunately, you knew that the best way to predict the future was to do what was most important back there in the past.
Now in your future, it’s your new and improved present.
“Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential.” — Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
Your potential is as wide as your ability to envision it and your willingness to work to achieve it.
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Ken West is the author of seven books designed to help you live the best life possible and flourish in this ever-changing creator economy.
