Everyone Wants To Tell You How To Write. Don't Listen To Them

Everywhere you look, people are telling you what to write. Not only that they are telling you what to write about. Experts are telling you what to write about. People with a few dozen followers on Twitter are diving into their own details with what you should avoid writing about. But here's the truth of it all:

Stop listening to them.

As someone who writes freelance for a living, most of everything I write is boring, monotonous, repetitive, and uninspiring. It's what people tell me to write. It's what pays the bills, what receives the clicks, and what brings in the eyes.

People tell me, “Hey, at least you’re doing what you love.”

Am I? Would Rembrandt be happy creating painting business logos? I’m sure Hemingway would love someone telling him he hadn’t used a keyword enough times in the opening paragraph.

Honestly, I hate most of the work I’m instructed to do. Because it strips away the heart and soul of what I enjoy doing.

Some clients are open to creative expression.

Once I wrote copy for a Las Vegas escort service in the form of a Dr. Seuss book.

But most of the time what I’m told to write is void of creativity, replaced with the drive for optimization.

Which is why I’m always surprised at how many posts on here tell others what to write.

How to write.

What to avoid.

Those are the kinds of instructions I receive for the repetitive business blogs or the 50th write-up on how to improve search engine rankings.

The beauty of blogging, whether it is on Vocal Media, Medium, your personal blog, or for another third party service, is you can write whatever you want. I turn to Medium as an outlet. Where I can let my actual passion for the written word flow.

I can rant and rave, or I can share stories of family or craft short stories that often have more threads of truth and connections to my life than most will ever realize.

And I don’t care if anyone reads anything I write.

If you do, that’s great. I hope there’s something within what I write you can take away with you. Often times with my writing audience members in the front row may get wet.

And if you don’t read it, it doesn’t bother me either. Because a great story, whether fiction or truth, isn’t mandated or instructed. It comes from the heart and the soul.

Where the soul can weep onto pages, exposing its deepest secrets and desires. Where I can come clean and intertwine personal feelings within short stories. Where I shout to the world about forbidden love and hidden feelings and yet nobody will know because it’s fiction and in reality, a bit of me is in every single character.

There’s plenty of people out there telling you what to write, or how to write, or when to write.

This isn’t grade school. This isn’t English Composition. This is a blank canvas, waiting for your brush and paint. Paint with words what you want to paint. Nothing strips away the creativity or your own passion when someone else dictats what you should or shouldn't do. You shouldn't reduce your creative side through the lens of someone else. Because what works for them may not work for you. Writing is a strange path, and while you can take advice from others, nobody can walk your path. That's what make writing from your heart such an opening experience. Only you have lived your experirences. Only you have seen life through your eyes.

So stop listening to what others are telling you to write.

And write what calls to you. Because you shouldn't be writing what others are telling you. You should be writing what your mind and soul crave to let out.