life enables storytelling
Inspired by Daniel's You Can’t Write Good Content If You Haven’t Done Anything.
You can’t write good content if you haven’t done anything.
You have done so much in your life that you have more good stories to tell than anyone can in their lifetime.
Creating content or documenting your life or even sharing your knowledge is super hard if you’re doing nothing.
Even when you think you're doing nothing, your abundant voluntary and involuntary behaviors contradict that thought. For example: admitting to doing nothing is admittedly doing something. Telling your stories, documenting your life, and sharing your knowledge are as difficult as you make them out to be.
You either start to repurpose other people’s content or just shitpost.
People have made entire livelihoods through repurposing other people's content or just shitposting.
On repurposing content, Dana's Generated text speaks to how often people partake in that activity:
Most of the text in my head is written by other people, songwriters, authors, friends, family.
A lot of my conversation is just generated text, generated by me, but often copied from others.
For that matter, this post that you're reading right now repurposes Daniel's text. Who knows how many people Daniel is copying from, intentionally or not?
On shitposting, I'm sure Daniel himself can think of brand roles, online personalities, and other archetypes that ride the strategy to fulfillment.
Content gets easy when you’re actually living it.
When you’re building something, you have unlimited material because you’re experiencing it firsthand.
Living your life continues to expose you to unlimited material and countless experiences. Those have informed so many easy stories that you can just deliver should you choose to.
I can write every day now because I’m doing things.
Running my business, Talking to clients, Solving problems, Making mistakes, Learning new things.
You might not be running your business or talking to clients like Daniel is. However, you most certainly have been solving problems, making mistakes, and learning new things. Which insights of yours deserve to be handwritten on paper, typed up in a notepad, or posted online?
My content is just documenting what I’m already going through.
If I wasn’t doing anything I’d have nothing to write about.
Whether or not you document what you're going through, it can be something worth writing about. That can be the case from your perspective, someone else's, or both. Even then, a story of yours you don't find good can be just what somebody else needs to climb out of their rut. Have you endured the reverse scenario?
So if you’re struggling to create content, the issue isn’t your writing.
It’s that you’re not doing anything worth writing about.
In my eyes, struggling with telling stories derives from perfectionism over poor writing quality or purportedly doing nothing. Each closed feedback loop of deliberate practice refines your storytelling capability that much more. Better that than waiting until you think you have done the perfect thing or written the perfect story. Be careful spending your lifetime chasing those dragons.
Start something tomorrow.
Go for a walk, talk to 3 random strangers.
Put yourself in situations where you’re learning and growing.
Then document that.
Your content will get 10 times better because you’ll actually have something to say.
Save the postponement of starting tomorrow for documenting your lively past and present. Remember walks that you took, talks you had with random strangers, and situations where you learned and grew. Inject yourself into those scenarios now if you can. May those memories and more be a testament to how you always have something to say. It's saying it that makes your story 10 times better.