Write what you love

Not just what you know...

I was long-distance chatting with a friend a few years ago and mentioned that my latest book had just been published (Building Better Ideas: How Constructive Debate Inspires Courage, Collaboration, and Breakthrough Solutions, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 11/2019). He congratulated me and then asked me for advice on writing. Like so many of us, his life and work are intensely rewarding and full and somehow, there’s never enough time available to write. Yet, he has things to say after many successful years of high-level consulting experience. He has done thoughtful reflection on how organizations and their leaders can grow and improve and has used those insights in his work. He would like to find a way to articulate what he’s learned and formulated for a broader audience through writing articles or even a book. I didn’t see the point in giving him the usual advice…write what you know, write something every day, don’t judge while you are writing. Perfectly good guidelines, all of them – but not very inspiring. Instead, I asked him two questions:

• What, aside from work, do you really love doing?

• What have you learned from that experience that could be applied in other ways?

In his case, he loved a particular activity that has taken him and his family to far-distant places and inspired him to care about life in new ways. In his case, the activity was scuba diving. He had never thought of writing a professional article using what he had learned about life and work from that activity. The conversation reminded me that most, if not all of us, have a passion for something we do unrelated to work in which we voluntarily invest our time, money, effort, and energy. It may be an art, a craft, a game or sport, a charity, a collection, or any activity that satisfies our curiosity, our creativity, our competitiveness, our generosity, our need to achieve meaning in our lives. So instead of saying, “Write what you know,” I say, “Write what you love.”

And just how does that work? Here’s a simple 1-2-3 framework:

1.   Name the unpaid activity that lights up your life, that you are constantly getting better at or trying to, that you would do more often if you could and that you look forward to doing when you finish doing whatever you’re getting paid for.

2.   Ask yourself what your most important lessons have been from doing this beloved activity.

3.   Now examine how those lessons apply to organizations, teams, your profession, your clients, or other aspects of the work you do. Then start your writing.

There are things you know and can apply from one context to another - perhaps metaphorically, perhaps in actual practice. Maybe nobody else has made those connections. You have something to say. Say it.