“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

― Terry Pratchett

First things first, you’ve got to feel comfortable with the idea that it’s worth getting your thoughts out on paper. I know from personal experience that often, you fall into thinking that everyone knows the things that you know about — that there’s nothing that you’re uniquely qualified to talk about.

That is 100% not true, you have unique insights, you have understanding, you have lessons that you’ve learned from your unique career that are worth sharing with the world. But how do you know what to write about?

Generating Ideas: Being You

When you meet with someone for the first time and you’re talking to them about what you do, what are the stories or anecdotes that you share?

People have short attention spans. Think about things that make them want to talk to you, rather than looking over for something else.

Your Hardships

Another thing to look at are what you’re struggling with today?

Contemplate the things that you struggle with day to day at work, that you’ve struggled with in the past, that you hear colleagues struggling with, when you talk about overcoming adversity or, and no matter how big the adversity is.

It could be very small trials and tribulations, it could be really large, difficult, hairy problems.

Whatever it is, when you talk about problems, when you talk about overcoming certain things, people like hearing that. Audiences like to know that there are solutions or they like hearing how you think!

Your Projects

What are you working on right now? What’s going on that you’re really struggling with? Those are topics for posts.

Or why did you quit your last job? Someone gives you an example of why they quit, that’s a topic.

Think about the topics that you discuss every day, that you talk to your husband or wife about, that you talk about at parties.

Make a list of all the things that you might want to write about and I guarantee you you’re going to come up with three or four sure-fire winners that you can start with.

Schedule and Organize Your Writing

It is much harder to get heard today. Cutting through the clutter, getting your voice heard over someone else’s voice should be your priority.

The way you make that happen, of course, is by writing great content and writing often.

Writing is often compared to muscle training. You start building up the muscle — and one of the things that you could do is think about the topics that you want to write about.

Keep a running list of things that you have a feeling are going to hit.

You can find your own tricks for keeping track of the topics that jump out at you during the day, that you find yourself talking about all the time and getting head nods from people.

Keep a list of what you’re going to do. And then get in the habit of writing.

Try to publish a post every other week is what’s recommended at first.

The idea is that if you can write every other week, you start showing up in people’s feeds and they start understanding what they’re going to get with your voice.

Not only that, they start expecting and enjoying getting your voice. Eventually, people want to hear what you have to say and they start turning to you as a thought leader.

Start Conversations

One final tip: Look through other discussions, find other things that you want to write about that you can just answer so that you’re writing now every week.

Sometimes, all you should try to do is start a conversation, so don’t feel like your piece has to be perfect, that it has to have all the answers.

It’s easier to start developing a pattern where you’re just responding to things, you’re hearing stuff going on and you’re writing pieces all the time that are getting attention.

Don’t wait for the perfect topic, for the perfect piece, because there is no perfect piece anymore. You can essentially let the crowd finish your thought sometimes.

But yes, you’re going to have to write a lot, just be mindful that really, people are incredibly willing to go with you on your journey as you discover what it is that you want to talk about.

People on Medium are hungry for good, thoughtful pieces, and will give you ideas about what else to write, about what they want to hear.

“You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.

That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.”

― Octavia E. Butler