Stealing Ideas to Become a Writer
Workshops teaching people how to “GET IDEAS” and become a Writer.
The other day an Instagram video stopped me mid-scroll.
A woman was promoting a course designed to help writers come up with “ideas” —how to find inspiration, what to write about, and where to get content.
I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT!
But let me keep this professional.. shall we?
What struck me wasn’t that the course existed.
It was the assumption behind it.
If you have to be taught how to find something to say, why are you trying to become a writer in the first place?
Writing has never been about producing words.
It’s about expressing observations, questions, experiences, convictions, and ideas that refuse to leave you alone.
The writing is simply the vehicle.
Some people write because they want to be called writers.
Others write because they can’t keep what’s in their head to themselves.
Those are two very different motivations.
We’re living in a time where it’s easier than ever to build an identity around expertise.
You don’t need years of experience.
You don’t need original thought.
You don’t even need your own ideas.
You can consume someone else’s work, reorganize it, package it differently, and sell it to people who never saw the original.
The internet rewards distribution just as much as creation.
Sometimes more.
That doesn’t mean every course is dishonest, or that every person needs to be overflowing with ideas every hour of every day.
Every writer gets stuck.
Every creative has seasons where the words don’t come.
That’s different from building an entire writing practice around borrowing the thoughts of other people because you don’t have anything you genuinely want to say.
Writer’s block is one thing.
Having no relationship with your own thoughts is another.
The writers I admire don’t spend their days looking for content.
They’re constantly noticing things.
A conversation.
A contradiction.
A pattern.
A sentence they can’t stop thinking about.
An uncomfortable truth everyone else walks past.
The page isn’t where the work begins.
The observation is.
Maybe that’s the difference.
Don’t chase the identity of being a writer.
Become someone who notices enough about life that writing becomes inevitable.
