Writers — If You Don’t Have This, You Should Not Even Try

Eight years ago, all I wanted to do was be a bonafide travel blogger. So I set off on a 5-month road trip across America, alone, because I knew I needed to travel to be a travel blogger.

Strictly speaking, I didn’t succeed in the “travel” part of being a “travel blogger”, but that’s not important. What is important is I got out there and did something different. I had experiences, and that in turn gave me a LOT to write about.

I met a guy from Britain who changed my mind on certain political topics. I lived in San Francisco for two months, which, as you might guess, also changed my mind on certain political topics.

I think the main thing I learned, though, was what happens when you do stuff you’re scared of doing, and how every human out there is super scared when you get down to it.

I learned an abundance of lessons, and I emerged from my journey a new man with fire coming out my fingers. I wrote and wrote and wrote.

About 200+ blog posts later, I’m still going.

The magic ingredient to great writing, my friends, is experiences.

Experiences Make For Great Writing

I wouldn’t say experiences alone will write your next blog post, but they’ll damn sure inspire them.

Some people get into writing and I swear there is nothing special about what they’re saying at all. Those are the kinds of blog posts that feel like a chore to read through.

It’s not that they’re bad writers, it’s just that they’re saying a bunch of stuff that’s obvious.

It’s boring.

To spice up what they’re writing about, they need to draw from personal experiences they’ve already had. And guess what?

We’ve all been through something. We all have something terrifying, funny, inspiring, sad, happy, etc. happen to us before, right?

You’re breathing, therefore you’ve been through something. Show me more of what you’ve been through. Stop telling me vague lessons I’ve heard before in other articles — tell me your story.

That’s the only way to go.

Make Your Own Story

If you don’t want to write about past experiences for whatever reason, then create your own “persona.”

I don’t mean you need to act like someone else, I just mean you need to put yourself in a position to transform. To do this, psych yourself into doing things you haven’t done before. Have experiences. Whatever you transform into, that’s your new persona.

And guess what? The more experiences you have, the more your persona may change. I quickly became known as the “Philippines guy” on social media when my vlog went viral. That persona came out of my desire to travel. I wanted to be the travel vlogger but instead, I decided to just kick it in the Philippines.

I wasn’t writing about how to be a better writer in 2017 — that’s because I wasn’t sure what it took yet. I transformed into that person slowly over time as I kept having the experience of writing blog post after blog post.

Pay close attention to the experiences you’ve had — especially the ones you really enjoyed— they could be pointing you in the direction of your writing voice.

Give Me Something Different, Okay?

You need a different point of view on something. Today I talked with a woman in France for about 3 hours. Her points of view blew my mind. I felt like I didn’t even deserve to be in the conversation.

She probably had about 20 blog posts hidden in her words.

If she was a writer, I’d read everything she wrote.

We don’t follow writers for their ability, we follow them for their delicious points of view, and if you’re not saying anything different, then why should anybody read you over that other person saying the same thing?

Writing “personality” can help, but it only goes so far.

You need to be different. Be a critical thinker. Read more books. Have more experiences. Draw from the experiences you’ve already had.

Above all else, just incorporate your life’s story in there more. You can’t go wrong with that.

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