I first heard this example from Tony Robbins when he was giving an example of how to overcome your fear of public speaking.
Tony took everyone through 2 scenarios;
The first scenario was you having to deliver a speech about a topic that you’re given.
The second scenario was to talk about a memorable event (happy, sad, etc.) in your life.
The point was though it can still be equally frightening to give a speech to an audience in both scenarios, the second one tends to be easier to deliver because you truly know what you’re talking about from your heart.
It is the same with writing, at least for me.
It’s always easier to write about something I know versus something I don’t.
You’re probably going, “Duh!…” at this point, but hear me out.
As I’m learning to become a better writer, I find that there has just been too much emphasis being put on the ‘writing skills ‘part of the gig and less on ‘researching’.
Yes, yes, yes… researching your materials has always been mentioned as being ‘important’, but very few actually talk about it enough to justify its significance.
But think about it, if you had spent the majority of your time on researching instead of knowing how many characters should be in a title, and where should the ‘hook’ be, wouldn’t the writing part be less dreadful?
When you really know what you’re writing about, the remaining work of deliberate structuring and concise editing just seems a lot less daunting, not to mention you ‘flow’ better.
Let me know your thoughts on this.
