Want To Find Inspiration For Your Next Story?

Get off Medium!

You’re new to this Medium thing, but you’re going to prove all the nay-sayers wrong. You’ve decided to make it happen: turning writing into a legitimate side hustle.

Before you know it, your obsession with the platform is all-consuming. You fall asleep checking your stats and wake up refreshing the Partner Program earnings page. It’s your new Facebook, only instead of envy-triggering posts, your validation comes from views and claps from total strangers.

You follow all the top writers out there, study their work, and attempt to implement the lessons you’ve learned. You know you need to up your game, and there’s only one way of doing that quickly — writing every day.

It’s only a matter of time before you burn out.

There are no shortcuts to good writing. No get-rich-quick schemes on Medium. Follow for follow works only to the extent to which you are truly interested in what that person has to say. Like in any relationship, reciprocation is key.

So what do you do when you feel like you have nothing worthwhile to say?

You step back. You get out of your own head.

Intuitively you know this, but in today’s overstimulated world it’s difficult to detach. Our minds, more than ever, deserve and need time for unstructured thinking.

Unstructured thinking works best when free of distractions, and might closely resemble boredom. But if you push through with the inquisitive mind of a child, you can unlock fountains of creativity.

You can bring up ghosts from the past and offer them a scene to play out their story, a place to heal.

You can unravel dreams and plans for the future, and gently nudge yourself to take action in that direction.

You can simply be, in a room somewhere, on a path in the forest, on the beach, and forget the urgency that burdens us most days.

It’s a lot like being a child on summer break — not a care in the world, then, at some point, you’re actually looking forward to going back to school.

The more you focus on producing content, the less likely you are to see the forest from the trees. You no longer discover ancestral stories, gripping and masterfully written. Everything is evaluated by an artificial standard that you’ve somehow made your own: a platform’s specific writing guidelines.

No wonder your creativity gets stunted. It’s like posing for a picture when you’re acutely aware of your flaws. Your posture slouches, your gaze is humble and awkward, your smile is fake. The same goes for your writing and how you “optimize” it before you send it into this world for everyone to see.

There are ways to fix this. Reading the work of unapologetic writers who made their craft truly their own is one of the most powerful examples of how originality will eventually prevail.

Technique is important, for sure, but it comes with years of practice. For now, protect your spirit. Feed the spark inside of you.

Read actual books and go beyond the surface, into the author’s soul.

You’re a small fish swimming in a very large pond. This analogy is fresh in my mind as I’ve snorkeled in the clear waters of Greece this morning. There were big gilt-heads swimming around, and flanks of tiny fish keeping a tight formation.

We’re small for now, but who cares, as long as we’re keeping together. There’s a place for us within that formation, and there will be a place for us in the big fish waters as well.

Don’t worry if what you have to say might not be trending, as long as it holds true for you, you owe it to yourself to write it.

For whenever your mind goes blank, remember there’s a rich well of experiences in your subconscious waiting to be released and made sense of.

We will be on the other side, waiting to receive your unique perspective.