Write What You Know-Providing Value

Have you heard this phrase before? “Write what you know.” It’s something you say to people who want to write but don’t know what to write. It seems cheeky, almost a bit insulting. I mean, why the hell wouldn’t you write what you know? What is the value in that advice? Well, this is what it really means:

Write what you know that creates value.

I urge you to look a bit deeper into what this advice really means, “creating value”.

Let me give you an example of how this advice affected me. I never thought about writing anything but fantasy fiction. I love fantasy and my mind is extremely creative. I can world build in my head, it’s natural for me. I see characters, I see their depth. I can build their stories and understand their faults. For nearly two decades, I told myself, I don’t know how to write anything else. What I realized in 2017 was:

I was wrong.

Sure, I couldn’t write about the chemical reaction in rockets (without significant research investment), or a romance novel (at least not a very good one), but I, like everyone else, have a trade. I’m not really even sure what to call myself anymore, a DevOps engineer, a site reliability engineer (SRE), a consultant, a leader, a sorcerer — does it really matter?

What matters is I have a lot of IT experience and this is the value that I can write about. But who really wants to read what I have to write?

This answer became clear when I started working with IamOnDemand. If you aren’t familiar with them, IOD is a company which specializes in matching experts in their disciplines with professional editors to provide high-value content for IT companies. It was a perfect fit for me since I love to write, edit, and know IT. After talking with the CEO and CTO, I decided to give it a shot and write one article.

In the last 18 months, I’ve written 35 articles for IOD.

I never thought I’d generate so much content (that wasn’t fantasy) but when I started writing to provide value, it became easy and the market was hungry for it. I mainly ghostwrite for their customers, but occasionally write for IOD’s blog. One such article was tweeted by Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist for AWS. Sure, it may be just a tweet, but to me, it meant a lot. Jeff Barr is the man who decides what’s cool/valuable at AWS and shares it.

Believe me when I tell you, I never thought I’d get paid to write. At least, not technical articles, but I found success easier when I was taking the advice literally:

write what you know.

It’s helped me sharpen skills to write fantasy and allowed me to further integrate writing into a career and not just something I enjoy. It’s helped me focus on developing my writing skill. It helped me decide to invest in my passion and hire a writing coach last year. (One of the best decisions I’ve ever made). If you’re looking for a dynamite writing coach, check out Harry DeWulf and tell him I sent you.

If you are creating value, whether a relatable story, self-help guidance or just a solid “how-to”, people will read it and want to read more from you. I’m fortunate to have a trade with a tremendous amount of content to write about, but there are experiences each of you has that others are interested in. Why not write about it?

So, if you’ve ever thought, “I’ve always wanted to write,” write what you know. Most importantly, make it valuable! The rest is easy.

Originally posted here on Medium.com