Today I’m here to inspire you.

Specifically, I’d like to suggest that you do just this: write weekly articles about writing.

You might enjoy this, too

01 | Write about what you read.

• Look for techniques you can apply to your own writing.
• Look for patterns within and across authors’ works or compare them to other writers.
• There’s no need to limit yourself to books, either. What about the texts you come across daily that have no apparent artistic merit, such as DMs, social media captions, recipes, and other (digital or physical) ephemera? How can you draw those within the sphere of your literary attention?

02 | Write about your own writing.

• What are you pleased with?
• What techniques have you tried implementing and to what degree of success?
• Who or what have you been drawing inspiration from lately?

03 | Keep the topic as “small” and specific as possible for each article.

• Pare the topic down to its essential points.
• If the points are too broad or too varied, divide them across several instalments.

04 | Write less.

• Consider setting yourself a page or a word limit. Especially if you’re writing for an audience (including your future self).

05 | Write for yourself, or write for an audience.

• You might like to treat your articles as part of your writing journal and write by hand.
• Or you could type them up (or photograph them) and publish them to a social media platform or to your own site.

06 | Allow the medium to inform the articles.

• If you’re writing in your journal, perhaps you can skip introductions and conclusions. You can include private examples and excerpts from your own work that don’t need to make sense to anyone else but you.
• If you’re publishing your articles online, you might like to set up a certain style or formatting framework, include links to relevant references. You could also use images to illustrate your points.

07 | Write every week.

• Not for the sake of consistency, but to get into a rhythm of call and answer.
• Not to become more disciplined, but to strengthen your trust in the steady, endless flow of ideas and words.
• The more articles you write, the more you attune yourself to looking for subjects for your articles — and hence, the more you approach texts with a view to understanding how they work.

08 | Use a framework to study your reading, your writing, and the world.

• An archetypal story structure like the monomyth, the Fool’s Journey, or the One Page Novel can provide a very simple yet illuminating “lens” through which to view narratives.
• Literary theory is another marvellous opportunity to open up unseen and unexpected dimensions of signification in texts.

09 | Write about the (internal and external) narrative unfolding of events in your own life.

• Consider how to structure and relate an episode from your day.
• Study the words and modalities you use in your conversations with yourself and with others.
• What parallels can you find in archetypal stories or myths?
• What can you learn from studying your life as though it’s a story, and you the main character?

Don’t forget your handout:

You can print out and fold up this week’s worksheet into a folder for your Traveler’s Notebook. (idk why, I just felt like designing this…)

10 | Set up “treasuries”.

• Collect example quotations or references of any literary foci that interest you. This is a practice I recommend in my writing courses. It simply involves titling a page, a note, or a folder, and then jotting down relevant references under it (preferably accompanied by a short explanation).
• This can help you “connect the dots”.
• It also helps to be able to find quotations to support your articles when you come to write them.

11 | Study your past articles.

• Once you’ve written a few articles, re-read them to find ideas that connect, and concepts that you may want to explore in further articles.
• You might also consider how your articles read in terms of style and structure — perhaps you’re tempted to make some edits?
• Maybe you feel ready to publish some, or at least to share a few excerpts?
• You can also reflect on whether or not you’re finding the practice enjoyable and worthwhile, and whether or not you want to continue.

12 | Use your Zettelkasten / commonplace book.

• Look through your entries to discover areas of interest.
• Pull out a random card, or turn to a random page when you’re not sure what to write.

13 | Read others’ articles.

• What insights have you gained or what techniques have you adopted from these Story Scholar articles?
• Perhaps you could write a response to one of them or expand on the ideas you’d like to follow.

Have I inspired you to write weekly articles? Let me know!

Until next Sunday…