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{*Did you know you can write on Elephant? Here’s how—big changes: How to Write & Make Money or at least Be of Benefit on Elephant. ~ Waylon}
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The Writing Advice I (Really) Already Know but need to be Told Again. And Again.

This morning I was knocked upside the head with advice I didn’t ask for.

It just appeared, there, in my Instagram feed. Magic? Serendipity? Fate? Who knows. But it was there and I wasn’t scrolling any longer. I was reading. I was thinking. I was…bowled over by the advice that I really, truly, already knew but amazed at how seeing it said in a different way lit a spark in my brain.

I was, dare I say it, inspired.

Every so often the author Fredrik Backman offers writing advice on his Instagram. He also gives a warning, which to be fair, really just made me more curious: “I’m clearly not qualified to give advice, so if anything I say doesn’t work I strongly suggest to just try the opposite.”

Writing is hard.

I’ve never heard anyone say that it’s easy. There are easy moments. When words are coming faster than you can get them down on (digital) paper and the ideas flowing like an undammed stream.

Those moments happen. They exist.

But they are often the exception to the rule.

More often than not writing is a lot of thinking and considering and writing and erasing and editing and re-editing and hiding and avoiding and peeking your head out into the real world again so you’re not a total hermit and pretending that you’re not just talking to yourself. It’s getting yourself to be vulnerable and honest. It’s turning feelings into words. It’s connecting with people you don’t know and maybe never will. It’s an art, a craft, and it’s something that writers work at developing.

There are no clear rules to go about it. And there’s so much advice out there that it’s hard to sift through the helpful and the not-so-helpful.

My boss, and mentor, Waylon Lewis, has given me (and hundreds of others) the advice that has helped me the most over the years: just sit down and do it.

Don’t overthink it. You have something to say? Well, then, say it.

There’s some wisdom in that sentiment. And it’s advice that many, many writers have shared with the world. But Waylon has a bit of a caveat to that advice. He’s always advised me to write for one of two reasons:

1. For myself. Not all writing needs to be shared and if you’re writing for yourself, you’re often writing for the right reasons rather than writing for the purpose of getting famous or getting published.
2. For the benefit of others. When we write and consider how our words, wisdom, and insights can be of benefit to others, it changes our writing into something that will contribute to the world in a lasting way. And, bonus, it can honestly become cathartic for ourselves to share. Win-win.

Simple advice.

Easy advice.

Easy-to-forget-advice, until you’re reminded of it by another wonderful author saying the same thing in a slightly different way. I could feel the little cartoon lightbulb above my head this morning.

Fredrik Backman mused on the topic of whether or one should start writing with the characters or the story itself.

He said:

“I don’t start with anything. Which is rarely the answer anyone wants (but, in my defense, maybe they should have asked a professional). Sometimes I have a character, sometimes part of a story, but my books begin with however I want to feel at the end, and how I hope that the reader will.

I think, in the best of times, a writer gets just a few moments where the book really stays with the reader after the last sentence. Where there are no more words, just the author alone in one room and the reader alone in another, and just (if you’re truly lucky) that one electric spark across time and place. It’s one of the most intimate things I can imagine between two strangers.

So in one book, I wrote about coming out of loneliness. In another, living with anxiety. In a third, I told a story about what a community is, the sum of all our choices. But I don’t always have a word or a sentence to describe exactly what feeling I’m looking for, I just…know it. Sometimes I’m just trying to recreate the thing that happens in your chest when you wake up late at night and hear the love of your life snoring really loudly.

It can take me a long time to figure each one out, a story might bounce around my head for years before something clicks. But before I have that final page in mind, and know why it means something to me, I don’t have a direction.

People always ask about the ‘writing process’, and I wish I had one, but a lot of the time mine is just me screaming ‘YES BUT WHY IS THAT SOMETHING???’ to the voices in my head. So don’t take advice from me (really), but just in case you’re getting stuck halfway in your writing, maybe you can try asking yourself ‘why is this something?’, too.”

At Elephant Academy, we teach our writers to write from a place of being of benefit. My lightbulb moment this morning was realizing that asking “why is this something” is simply another way of saying the same thing.

So, the next time I sit down and write I’m going to think to myself “how can I be of benefit?” by asking “why is this something?”

And maybe, you will too.

~

Take a deeper dive into writing to be of benefit with Waylon Lewis in Elephant’s only live Find your Voice course of 2024.

Do you have a heart? Do you have a voice? Do you have experiences? Then this course is for you.

Learn more here. Join us this September.

Have questions? Email our Elephant Academy Director, Molly, and she’ll be glad to help you out.