How do we know what to write next?

Tips & Take-Alongs for February

Before I dive into today’s Tips & Take-Alongs, I want to share with everyone that I’m working on a new resource called The Writing Assignment Index. This will be a place for new and established writers (whether you’re new to Substack or writing a newsletter, in general) to:

• Think creatively about what you’re writing next; 

• Answer reader questions and feed their curiosity;

• Go more deeply into a topic that relates to your life experiences.

At the end of today’s post, I share a look at how the index is shaping up right now—organized by prompts like “If you are…” and “If you have…” and “If you were…” And I’m asking for feedback from my paid readers about what they’d like to see the index include. Upgrade here to read today’s Tips & Take-Alongs and chime in on the index.

A warm welcome to the readers who signed up to join Ask an Editor as paid readers in the month of February.  

Jill Hinton Wolfe

;

Christin Thieme

;

Nishitha Ajayakumar (she/her)

;

Denise Wakeman

;

Nonsense on Stilettos

;

Elle Penner

;

Andrew Larsen

;

Justin Camp

;

Rachel Wheeley

;

Jamie Holbrook

;

Rita Ott Ramstad

;

Julia Karol

;

Stephanie Pollock

;

Marta Lane

; and Tara!

I genuinely do a little happy dance and/or send a text to my best friend whenever I see someone is supporting their writing with the resources I’m creating here. It means so much! ☀️

How do we know what to write next? 

As most of you know, in addition to the twice-monthly Ask an Editor workshops, this section of the newsletter also includes advice essays, like this one on reimagining content calendars and this one on how to review your newsletter’s first impressions.

In the context of cultivating a newsletter I think this question—How do we know what to write next?—can get a lot of us stuck. So I’d like to offer a few helpful exercises that I use when deciding what to write next for Ask an Editor. 

1. One thing I enjoy doing is reading through the comments on a few of my most recent pieces of writing. And I try to identify what commonalities I can find in what people decided to share. When I do this, I am looking for similar phrases such as, “I learned so much” or “I had the same thing happen to me” or “Did you know that…” Reading the comments on our essays can often give us insight into what’s resonating with readers—so we can then test that against what we’re sensing we’d like to explore next.

2. I look at the calendar, touch in with my memories and reflect on what’s usually happening for me this time of year. Is there anything cyclically going on that might be affecting readers that my writing could speak to? For example, back when I still set New Year’s resolutions, February is the month that I would typically find them completely clobbered by my life and a hundred different distractions. Cyclically speaking, a lot of other people could be feeling the exact same way. Maybe they are feeling like I used to—disappointed and misguided by an inner message that I just “can’t keep things together.” From that place of relating, I would step into my writing practice and resources and wonder, “How can my writing meet my readers in that place?”

3. I look at the “anchor” essays for The Editing Spectrum in my writing calendar and wonder how I can be helpful and supportive to my readers. What gap might they need filled next that my skills as an editor can offer? Right now, I have a few anchor essays that help launch my paid readers:

» Reimagining content calendars

» A sequencing tool for your first impressions online

» Substack editorial branding checklist

When I think about these three really big pieces, they offer a lot of practical support to folks who are trying to bring their writing into the world in a nourishing way. But I know this isn’t a complete archive of anchor essays I’m trying to build (and I don’t have a master plan sketched out anywhere — creating and publishing these has been guided by my intuition and energy levels at the time). When I step inside the lived experience of other writers, what might still be missing from this list? With this question top of mind, I try to create from this place of curiosity and desire to be helpful.

Of course, not all writing is coming from a place of connecting with readers. Sometimes we need to let writing rise out of a deeper, more innate place inside us and then give it to the world without expectation. I say this as someone who aspires to write all things without expectations, but the reality is: I do write for connection. I think many of us do this, and that’s OK! I think a nourishing writing practice lets us ebb and flow with those innate, human desires and then calls us to reset and root back down into what is essential in our writing. In my experience, this kind of deeper writing tends to feel more experimental, risky even—but the inner nourishment it provides (to all my writing endeavors) is hard to quantify. The clearest way I know it’s time to publish something to the personal writing subsection of my newsletter is this:

Everything in my daily life has little echoes of this topic popping up everywhere. I see images in my mind being created around the topic (like the scene in the beginning of this essay with my grandmother reaching to grab food in the freezer—it was showing up while driving in the car, on the way to take my daughter to school … just everywhere!). I’ve learned this is a way my system nudges me to tell this story—almost as if my alters are saying, “We’re all ready! Let’s tell the world!”

So if a picture, a movie, a quote, a person’s face can’t escape your daily comings and goings, it might be time to give that essay to the world.

What are you writing about these days?

Share this post and tell us what you’re exploring in your writing and if you feel stuck about what to write next.