Writing Isn’t About Having Ideas, It’s About Noticing Them

A man sits at a bar deep in thought, takes another sip from his glass then breaks down in a flood of tears. How I wish he could in that moment, open his notes app or a paper towel and capture that very thought and moving memory that drove them to tears.

Those are raw stories from the core. Unique to him and the world is willing to hear all about it. Someone can find that relatable. That could be the little nudge for someone to know they are not alone in their experience.

I have been religiously following Julia Cameron's 12-week plan to unblock and write some good stuff.

The specific challenge I loved was coming up with 5 alternative career paths, taking one and running with it. If you wanna be a marathoner, get some running shoes and try it out to see if you like it.

It’s a way to test out a couple of ideas, see which one sticks, then go all out on it.

I am keen on writing, so it topped my list. I have been writing daily.

I tend to push my daily writing towards the end of the day and usually do not plan what I am going to write about. I wait for it to come to me. I know. Sounds like some Elizabeth Gilbert’s big magic thing. But that’s really how I go about it.

I have always had elaborate thoughts and imaginations, just about anything from childhood traumas, experiences, places I have been, and sometimes just what’s going on in the world. History, human interactions and what is happening around me also heavily influence my writing. You will figure this out if you stick around long enough.

I have gotten into the habit of tapping into these thoughts and putting them down on paper. Basically documenting my thoughts.

Writing from your reservoir

This idea of writing from within reminded me of something I heard from a podcast recently. Writing from abundance. Writing from abundance builds on the premise that writing is not necessarily the magic of creating out of thin air, but compiling knowledge. You put together everything you have experienced in an order and that’s what the world appreciates as original thinking. It's like you lend your eye to the world to see things from your point of view.

Good writing, then, is not about original ideas. It’s about being more aware.

I came to this epiphany after several years of attempts to get my writing off the ground. I have had blogs in the past, everything from blogging tips, air fryers and travel.

Having worked in marketing has not helped with my writing much, because it has taught me to write within the bounds of a keyword.

The attention split between trying to strike perfect optimisation and effortlessly getting a message out, too often waters down good prose. What is the adventure anyway if you have to write within a niche?

I love writing in flow. I love the rush of pounding down the keyboard like a madman before the ideas escape me, flow dies under the weight of corporate constraints.

I have moments where vivid framing of stories comes to me and I ignore them for later, only for the excitement around it to die.

We all have ideas coming to us throughout the day, but we just don’t pay enough attention. We either just ignore them as thoughts, we are not interested in writing at all, or we have not come to learn that it’s the universe's way to get things into our lives.

We can either capture the abundance of the universe or just let it slide into distant memory. Never to be thought of again.

Don’t Chase Ideas. Notice Them

I was sitting down recently, just reading on my Kindle, then specific childhood memories came flooding back, which could have been triggered by something in the text I was reading. They came with such detail that it felt like a constrictor on my chest.

Usually this could be something that gets overridden by another thought about what I am going to have for dinner or a notification of an email from work, but I got up, sat at my working desk and pounded away capturing the story. How it came to me. The words came to me and I wrote straight for about 30 minutes.

We have all felt these moments. We are just not aware of them or aware enough to capture them.

Some experiences are stored in our minds, mostly forgotten over time, but occasionally they come flooding back.

Writing from your reservoir is the way to tell stories without feeling like you need to invent original ideas.

The universe will send you a memory of the deep feelings of shame or hurt you felt in kindergarten when your pants dropped before the class, everyone broke into laughter, and how that has informed why you wear your belt a little too tight now.

Writing doesn't require genius. Just attention.