How to write quality essays?
As a writer, I often wonder where I’ll get my next thought, my next story, or my next tweet. But the funny thing is, I always end up with more pointers and story ideas in my notes app than I ever finish in one session.
I’m not the only one who worries about not having enough creativity left to write new ideas, new perspectives, or new stories to wow my audience—many great writers of yesteryear had the same problem. A good whisky solved a lot of problems for them, and I can’t blame them for having a fine whisky as their writing partner.
A man’s gotta lose some sanity to practice irrational storytelling. How else am I going to convince someone that a person died and a cop solved the murder case by sending the culprit to jail? I have to convince people that it could happen, that it could be real—that cops in my country can actually solve cases.
If you’re a writer, regardless of what you write, I bet you wonder where you’ll discover your next great idea. So, you buy books, subscribe to newsletters, go for a walk while listening to podcasts that seem to never end. It’s like going to the gym and then eating a cheeseburger to ruin all that hard work.
I could never understand how people can talk for hours and still have things left to say in podcasts. Then I wonder what kind of people listen to others yapping for three hours as a source of motivation. If I had to listen to a couple of guys for three straight hours, I’d need a painkiller or a tranquilizer to numb myself. So, you wonder if maybe that book or that podcast will give you your next idea, not your brain. You don’t trust those gray cells in your mind to formulate a beautiful idea for you.
You believe it’s best to recycle existing ideas rather than create a new one, much like Tim Cook thought it was better to spread out the launch of features already present in other phones across three new versions of iPhones calling them all the best instead of making one great iPhone. You could simply observe the world and find enough ideas from the anomalies we discover.
There are enough fat people roaming around in the joggers’ park, wearing weird outfits that would make you puke, to inspire a quality piece on the importance of wearing decent outfits. If you’re into fitness, lo and behold, you don’t need a podcast—you only need to talk to people, observe their behavior, and lose your mind over their stupidity to write a passionate piece about it.
That’s what I do most of the time. The source of all my ideas is that I judge people. I observe them, and I judge them. They give me enough fodder to write essay after essay.
I love humanity—I’m bullish on the existence of humanity—but I abhor people in general. I feel most people aren’t worth the time. Once you develop the habit of observation and tolerance for self-truth—most importantly, if you don’t lie to yourself and can criticize yourself freely—you’re going to find most people mediocre. So, it’s from this variety of mediocre people that I find my ideas.
Of course, I have to tell my readers I’m observing anomalies in the world, but who do you think the anomalies are? It’s the mediocre ones: the average, the ones with no quality thoughts, who don’t question their dogmas, can’t even control their food habits, want the world to tolerate them without judgment, and listen to ridiculously long podcasts without fainting.
I consider myself the youngest old man because I’m 35, but in my headspace, I already think like I’ve been in this world for 135 years. I’ve consumed so much writing, had so many thoughts, and disagreed with so many people that it’s safe to call myself the youngest old man. And as a young old man, I’m judging these online writers who’ve learned writing from YouTube and silly courses—like learning to fuck from porn. How good are you going to be?
These writers want lots of templates, lots of “thinking material.” They can’t even walk without their headphones blazing with dudes yapping on podcasts. They believe if they can’t have a new thought or a new writing piece, they have no right to live. But thinking and writing can be two separate things. How can you have a thought about something and write about it on the same day? How can I think about fatsos walking all over the park and write about fitness unless I observe how they behave? I have to observe and think that these fatsos are fat because they have no discipline in their lives.
So, you need to have a lot of thoughts in your mind before you turn to that blank page, and then you need to organize those thoughts in a cohesive manner. For instance, you can think about fatsos roaming around the park, gawking at your perfect body, but you can’t write that. Aligning your thoughts means you write about the obesity epidemic, not the “fatso problem.”
That’s what I mean when I say people don’t want to think—they want outcomes. If they write a piece and it doesn’t get views in the next 48 hours, they want to slit their wrists. So they’re always in search of a piece that can grab eyeballs. They have to cater to people who are always on social media, scrolling until their testosterone dies a brutal death or kingdom come—whichever happens sooner.
They write fancy headlines intended to shock people into reading their essays, which are designed to deliver shock after shock, like a Russian doll, and people read like they’re participating in Russian roulette, waiting for the bullet with their name on it.
So, if you want to write—and if you want to write well, something your kids could read in the future without hating you for it—you need to deliver value. You need to make them laugh, think, or ponder.
For that, you need to walk among the people, observe them, learn about them, hear their stories. Let the wind touch your face, let the sweat annoy you for a while, let the breath of polluted air enter your nostrils so you know the world is more than a few dudes yapping on mics for hours.
And when you have all these things safely secured in your head, you need to dissect them, wonder a few questions, and answer them with all the observations and stories you’ve collected. Then you sit down and write until God asks you to stop.