Discover Your Purpose as a Writer

Many writers write to their potential, few to their purpose.

It quickly becomes evident for those who do a lot of reading when a writer is writing to their potential versus their purpose.

Many writers have the potential to write on many different topics, and there are the rare few who can pull this off very well and keep readers engaged throughout each article.

There is a magic that happens when you discover your purpose as a writer, though, when writing becomes less of a task and more of a journey.

I don’t happen to be one of those very talented writers who can effortlessly write on many topics and pull it off with excellent results.

I also happen to be one of those writers who has found it challenging to figure out my past writing purpose. I wrote and wrote and wrote and couldn’t figure out why nothing compelling happened with my writing.

Having struck gold with a couple of articles, I went back and began to study what I did differently. From where did the success come?

What I discovered is that my life journey and my writing journey are following a similar course. As I get past my title, activities, and status in life, I have found that my purpose and living to my purpose are much more important than living up to my potential.

What is Potential?

Potential is all those things about which we can do or write. We are all capable of doing and writing about many things.

The challenge comes in whether we should be doing and writing about all of these interests.

One way to differentiate between a writer writing to their ability versus writing to their purpose is how an article you are reading flows.

If you are writing to your ability or potential, there isn’t much risk in your writing. You won’t step out of your comfort zone and write articles that may have perfect prose, but they are missing that human element.

One can tell the human element in writing when you put two similar articles side by side. I love reading articles on The Startup mainly because I love business, and I love reading about how other people are starting businesses.

If you read enough articles on startup businesses, one thing you will find in these articles is that many writers are writing toward their ability and the pieces are still good, but they lack emotion.

What is Purpose?

Purpose is knowing why you write and pouring your heart into every article because you know you’re supposed to write on that subject.

The articles I write that get the most responses are the ones that I have written, re-written, almost deleted because they read poorly, written over, and finally, while out on a long run, the right emotion to put into words seems to come to me.

When I have poured myself into an article and believe there is nothing more I can write, this is the time to do a final edit and hit publish.

One’s purpose for writing needs to be defined. I have told my wife often that I write because I hope that one person can be encouraged to pursue a life lived to the full by reading my words.

My purpose for writing, even articles on writing, is not to come off as the expert. I’m not. I’m not an expert on running, but I run a lot, and I love the peace that comes from running. I write many articles on faith, not because I have it all together, but because hopefully, people will see that if somebody like me can still hold on to faith, they can also.

I wrote one political article, amazingly successful, with lots of views, reads, and responses. I thought I was supposed to write more, and they were all garbage. Probably the successful one was garbage also, to be honest.

The reason I know I’m not supposed to be a political writer? I can write a decent article on politics, have many opinions on politics, and read tons of articles on politics. However, I don’t care about politics. I’m cool if Donald Duck wins the presidency, just as long as whoever wins doesn’t raise taxes on my hard-fought income.

There is no purpose in me writing those articles, so I’ve retired from writing them.

This brings me back to purpose versus potential. I would rather earn less money writing about things that bring me joy than earning more money writing about things that make me feel empty.

Writing to your purpose will take you longer to raise a readership, those people who look forward to your next article. It may save you lots of stressful moments, though, and that is much more valuable than a couple of dollars.

Deciding to write to your purpose instead of your potential will be a tough decision. You’ll be tempted just to put articles out there to get them published, and that’s okay.

Writing to your purpose in the long term plan, writing to your potential gets you into the practice of writing.

The Long Road Versus the Short Road

Many people are seemingly rushing to strike it rich that they spend little time discovering their purpose.

This is painfully obvious if you read any mainstream article today. The headlines are clickbait. The writing style seems rushed and hurried with little quality, and let’s not even begin to talk about the lack of editing with grammar and punctuation challenges throughout most articles.

I’m far from a grammar and punctuation expert, but I use the tools available to me even if it takes longer to craft an article because I’m cautious about these areas.

Today, much of what you read feel like somebody is throwing a bunch of mud up against the wall and hoping something sticks.

Rarely do I find a gem amid the noise. I still try, and every once in a while, I stumble upon a well-written, well-thought-out article. I found this one on Fox News of all places.

Writing with the long road as your primary purpose means taking longer to find your niche and your audience. However, once you find that audience, the people reading will be loyal and keep coming back to see more of your gems.

Writing with the short road and immediate riches as your primary purpose may find you get one outstanding payday and then crickets after, because people will feel like you were using them to pad your pockets.

People are reading more today. An article in The Guardian in 2020 stated that 52% of people surveyed are reading more because they had more time. That trend will carry through to years to come simply because a reading habit is hard to replace.

Reading is calming, and in today’s world, people are looking for small escapes into calmness.

It will pay in the long run to be mindful of your purpose, to strive to write about things that excite you and fill you with joy, rather than just pumping out another piece in hopes that people read it.