Ep 133: How to Decide What to Write Next (Introduction to What Do I Write Next series)

Every day, a writer wakes up and asks, “What do I write next?” And the answer varies from writer to writer—even your own answer may change from week to week. Sometimes it’ll be obvious what to write next. When you’re approaching a looming deadline and that article or chapter must be completed, the decision is made for you. You sit down and work on that. But other days you have flexibility. You can write anything you want. How do you choose? Can we be sure the next thing we write is the right thing to write, or the best thing? Do we need to be sure? I don’t think there’s an absolute right or wrong answer. You choose. But you usually choose based on something, whether consciously or subconsciously. And if you make the choice based on something that rings true with your values and supports where you’re at in your journey, you can feel good about your decision. Ways to Decide The next few weeks, we’ll go through various ways you can decide, so you’ll feel a little more confident moving forward on whatever you do write next. Write Something That Moves You Toward Your Goals When you’re trying to decide what to write next, you may already have clear goals in mind. You want to submit poetry to literary journals in hopes of being published this year, or you want to put together a book proposal and send it to an agent this fall. Knowing your goals can help you start with the end in mind and work your way back so that you know what to write today and the next day. For you, the question “What do I write next?” will be easily answered by those goals—your next thing to write will be whatever moves you closer to that goal. But you may not be that clear about your goals. You may not know where you want to be in a year or what you want to do even in the next month or so. Or you’re re-evaluating your goals. Or you just want to write. That’s okay. You don’t have to overthink it or get uptight about your decision. But if you want to give it some thought, I’m going to toss out various filters or motivations that might help you begin to think about your next writing project and make a decision. This list will serve as an overview, and then in the weeks ahead, I'll go into more detail on some of them. So…How do I decide what I write next? Write Something That Increases your Skills One way to decide what to write next is to take stock of your skills and experience. Do you need to work on something? You could pick a project based on its ability to help you hone the craft and develop yourself as a writer. Write Something You Can Finish and Ship Fast If you’re working on a long-term project and have been for years, you may realize you’re not going to get any real feedback on it for several more months and you won’t know what readers think for months or even a year after that. An occasional shorter project lets you enjoy quick turnaround and a sense of completion. This could be something as immediate as a social media update or as formal as a poem sent to a literary magazine. Write What’s Next in Sequence If you’re writing a blog article series, write the post that explains the next step or stage. If you’re writing a novel, tackle the next scene. Your short story will need the next beat. A poem grows with the next line leading to the next stanza. An article will expand with another paragraph or section. The sequential approach can be a logical way to decide what to write next. Write Something for Validation You may want to write something in hopes of a magazine acceptance. You’ll get that feeling of being chosen. “Hey, they picked me! They picked my article! Someone other than my spouse and mom says my writing is worth publishing.” After that, you may have readers responding and enjoy anothe...