Monday Mastery: When writing is impossible
How do you write when life has you by the throat?
Welcome to Monday Mastery, a series designed to shift your perspective, teach you new techniques, and help you become a more effective writer, one tip at a time.
How do you write when your life blows up?
As much as I tout writing as a cathartic form of communication, the reality is that there are seasons of life when coming to the page truly is impossible.
(That’s true for most of us, at least. I do know a few rare authors who can produce books in the wildest of circumstances — lookin’ at you, Bernadette Marie.)
So when getting out of bed takes every ounce of willpower you have for the day, when you’re running around like a maniac trying to tackle personal-emergency-related tasks that are popping up like Whack-a-Mole, when simply breathing feels like effort and you have nothing left to give to the page …
How do you continue the practice of writing?
Maybe you don’t. Maybe you can let it go for a while. But if you’re in a position where you’re writing professionally, or your thought leadership is a key marketing tentpole for your company, or you otherwise have to write — how do you do it?
Here are a couple of options to consider …
Option 1: Be real
We’ve all had the experience of reading something, or listening to someone speak, and feeling like there’s something off — then we realize it’s because the person’s communication is completely inauthentic. Much of the time, it’s because that person isn’t sharing anything of themselves in their writing or speech.
Sharing something of ourselves is how informational communication becomes meaningful communication. And we don’t need to overshare in order to do that. We just need to allow a little bit of our personal experience to come through.
Allow some of what you are going through to come into your writing.
Yes, even if what you are going through is impossibly hard.
Yes, even if what you are writing is strictly professional.
Let your experience come through in your writing. Be as raw as you want in that first draft — you can always edit it and pull back on the personal elements if you need to. The point of this is to erase the line between you and your writing. Allow your words to be an extension of who you are at this point in time.
This will free you to write that first draft. And sure, it may take a little extra editing to make it publishable, but that’s okay. Sometimes our writing needs extra editing — that’s true even when life is “normal.”
Option 2: Automate part of the process
As you know, I don’t believe we should be using AI to write for us. This leads to skill atrophy, language homogeny and the replicant effect. However, I also believe that AI is here to stay, and we should do our best to learn about it and use it for good.
Here is a way you can use AI to help with some of the heavy lifting when producing professional writing:
Do a brain dump on the page. Just let yourself loose about a topic. Let it be messy and raw and emotional. If you’ve got research to include, slot it in where it makes sense, but don’t worry about weaving it perfectly. You are creating data in this step, not poetry.
Paste that draft into your AI of choice — ChatGPT and Claude are the most popular general AI tools at the time of this writing — and give the bot this prompt: Take this piece of writing and expand it into an [article, email, etc.] for [target audience]. Structure and write it for a Flesch reading score higher than 50.
Take the output and rewrite it, or have an editor rewrite it for you. This is key. Do not publish the AI output as-is. And do not just edit it. Rewrite it. That’s the only way to avoid language homogeny and maintain that human fingerprint on your work.
Is this extra work? Yes, absolutely. But if you have to write, this will help you get it done without losing the impact of your work.
Change is the only constant
Life has extreme ups and downs. Sometimes it’s a roller coaster, and sometimes, like my friend Anna Wolf says, it’s like Chutes and Ladders.
When you’re going through something in your personal life, take a break if you need to. There’s no shame in it.
But if you can’t take a break from writing — if it’s part of your professional responsibility, as it is for many of us — I hope these two approaches make it a little easier for you.
Do you have other methods of writing through major life events? If so, share them with me in the comments!