Questions to hone your expertise
I know you know many things
There’s no shortage of prompts to help you get unstuck from the “I don’t know what to write about” blues (see the frequently-updated giant list I made of how to generate a lot of topics to write about). But, what about the writing you want to do in order to better position yourself and your knowledge? The writing that will help you focus your body of work a bit more and make your expertise even clearer? One way to approach it is to free write about these questions:
How can you teach people how to better use tools or services in your industry or area of expertise? Are there things you can help people better do or understand related to your area of expertise?
If you know a lot about, say, native plants, maybe that means writing about stewardship, about planning your yard around native plants and pollinators. Or, if you know a lot about surfing or filmmaking or reporting or law, maybe you create guides of how to interact with or better understand aspects of those things often misunderstood or fumbled or feared to be daunting.
What are your values? What’s your deal? What topics are related to those things?
Values maybe isn’t the right word, but what are those 2-3 qualities that most people who know you would use to describe you? Tenacious? Straightforward? Patriarchy-fighting? Strong? Funny? For example, maybe your value of fighting injustice translates into a piece of writing about how to ethically do XYZ, or how to center marginalized voices in publishing, etc.
What are you good at?
Name even the weird stuff here that is hard to describe. For example, I’m a good connector of people, I’m good at coming up with creative ways to solve weird creative problems, I’m good at distilling complex shit down and explaining it to others in a simple way, and I’m good at creating something out of nothing. That last one is vague, but it’s a theme that’s been present my whole life, so on the list it goes. I’m also good at more tangible and nameable things like broadcasting, interviewing, writing, negotiating, and adapting books for screen, but list all your stuff, measurable and not so measurable and compare that list to your answers to the previous questions. That could translate into, say, a guide to creating legal documents for creative partnerships, negotiating a job when class and power dynamics are askew in the room, a funny 101 guide to writing a novel, a no-bullshit guide to weddings or media literacy or running marathons or turning your lawn into a haven for native pollinators.
Let’s fn go, fam.
