How to write when you’re not a writer?
Pro tips for non-writers
My favorite authors aren’t writers per se. Maybe because I read non-fiction more than fiction. Daniel Kahneman, the author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, is a psychologist. Yuval Noah Harari, the author of Sapiens, is a historian. James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, is an entrepreneur and a habits expert. They wrote these books to share their expertise on something that they are passionate about. It’s their love for the subject, not the love of writing. Good for us, we get to learn about their strong and unique ideas. But, what’s their motivation behind writing?
Why write if you’re not a writer?
Whether you’re an expert or not, when you start to write about a topic, you make new discoveries. Sometimes, you realize that certain things that you thought made sense don’t actually make sense. Other things that you didn’t think of before matter.
“However much you learn from exploring ideas in other ways, you’ll still learn new things from writing about them.”
— Paul Graham
As you write, you organize your thoughts better. You gain a better understanding and develop a strong point of view.
By this logic, shouldn’t everyone write? Most people are passionate about something or the other. As they write about it, they’ll become better at it. Others will benefit from their expertise. It’s a win-win.
Most people agree with these benefits. Then what’s stopping them?
A few years back, I met a friend who was wondering about her next steps professionally. She had recently quit her job to move countries with her spouse. She and I both agreed that this was a good opportunity to pursue her interests instead of falling back into the job rut. She’s passionate about food and food photography. She’d talk about food with such zeal that even non-foodies would stop to listen. Her food shots would turn home food into a gourmet dish.
Until then, it was a hobby. She wasn’t sure whether or how to take things forward. I suggested she start writing about it. Putting thoughts out and getting feedback from others would help figure things out. She discarded the idea with the notion that writing wasn’t her cup of tea.
The idea of writing doesn’t click with those who don’t see themselves as writers. It’s not so much as “Why should I write?”, rather it’s “How can I write?”
What’s holding them back is the fear of turning their chaotic thoughts into an elegant piece of writing. They are under the false impression that the first stream of thoughts coming out of the minds of pro writers is already organized.
But as any pro writer will tell you, that’s not the case. Their thoughts are as chaotic as anyone else’s. They just don’t fear the chaos.
The first tip to becoming a pro writer is to embrace the chaos.
Provide chaos a home outside your mind
You need to provide your unstructured, random thoughts a place to live outside your mind. Just like you need a space for your structured writing.
I make this distinction by creating two writing workspaces—Playground and Battlefield. Playground is my home to unstructured thoughts. Battlefield is my home to structured thoughts.
Think of them as two folders that’d store new pages.
The screenshot above is from Notion, the free writing tool I use and highly recommend. You can download the desktop app here or simply use the browser version.
To make workspaces like above, add a page by clicking the + button and naming it Playground. Add another new page and name it Battlefield.
When you’re ready to start writing, simply add a page inside the Playground and start typing.
Playground is my home to chaos and I suggest you make it yours too. You don’t need to think twice before putting your thoughts down.
Imagine you are a stenographer typing your fastest on one of those vintage typewriters while your boss, i.e., your mind dictates its thoughts. You don’t have the time to remove redundancies, maintain a structure, or keep it focused on a central idea. Your goal is to keep up with the multiple threads running in your mind. Your goal is to download it all to your page.
Your brain dump would feel something like this…
As you keep going, something magical happens. Your thoughts start to come together. You start losing the trashy threads. You start to attend more to the ones that make the most sense and dig those down deeper.
When clarity starts to emerge, I copy my better thoughts to Battlefield, leaving Playground as is. It can inspire me another day when I’m feeling less creative.
You might not realize it yet, but Playground is your creative space. It’s the goldmine for your new ideas. You can come back here anytime, extract a thread and move it to Battlefield.
When in Battlefield, stay focussed on a single, central idea. Finish one thread of thought before you start another one.
After you’re done writing your first draft, it’s time to make it better. How do you do that? By doing nothing!
Let your unconscious take over
To make your writing better, you need a critique of your unconscious mind.
It’s the doing-nothing time when your unconscious thought process kicks in. Experts call it the incubation period. It’s the time when you’re less constrained by conventional ways and more open to generating novel ideas, making new connections. That’s how letting go of a complex problem for some time or sleeping on it helps.
It would feel like you just came up with the solution. The truth is that when you are taking a shower, going for a walk, when you think you are doing nothing, your unconscious is hard at work.
Doing nothing is the most productive time for creative work.
“A great deal of knowledge is unconscious, and experts have if anything a higher proportion of unconscious knowledge than beginners.”
— Paul Graham
You don’t have to sleep after writing your first draft. Taking a break like going for a run or playing with your pet would also do the trick.
When you come back to your writing, be a critical editor. Read your writing with a fresh pair of eyes. Delete extra words. Add a missing piece if a thought doesn’t lead to the next one.
A pro writer spends more time editing than writing, and even more time reading.
Read slow, read more
It’s a simple formula to never run out of ideas:
Ideas = Read books + Read more of what’s around you
Books that make you stop and ponder are the best ones. A good book inspires everyone in a unique way. After reading a book, the ideas and connections that I make will be entirely different from yours.
e.g., after reading Homo Deus, a book that talks about the future of humanity, I ended up connecting it with designing products of today!
Besides reading books, there’s a lot more to read in the environment around us. We fail to do that while walking like zombies with our heads down staring at our smartphone screens.
Just being present in the physical world can supply you with an endless list of new ideas to write about.
James Altucher, an entrepreneur and angel investor proposes coming up with 10 ideas every day soon after reading an inspirational book. Why 10? It’s about pushing your mind when you think it’s done. It’s easy to come up with 2, 3, 4 ideas. By the time you’re on the 5th or 6th idea, the obvious ones are already out of your system. Now the mind has to work hard, think of novel ways. It’s when good ideas start to flow.
Create an Ideas workspace in your Notion and get to work! Start turning chaos into clarity.
Happy writing ✍️.
