How You Can Improve Your Writing With Bubbles and Squares
By: Loren A Olson Md
Tags: Creativity, 52 Week Writing Challenge, Writing Tips, Writer, Writing

But what next? Have I launched all my rockets? I didn’t want to keep re-writing the same story. I needed to find other related topics that I thought my growing audience would find interesting. These stories are also in that Q1 wheelhouse. I wanted something for those who were already engaged, but I hoped somewhat different stories, submitted to different publications, would increase my audience. I will continue to write for Q1, but I know it’s not going to be enough.

Q2: What are the other things that I am interested in, passionate about, and have some expertise? How can those topics be enlarged and deepened with a bit of planning and research?

I don’t know what other readers think, but some people write stories they aren’t equipped to write. I don’t mean to sound elitist, but if someone who hasn’t gone beyond Psychology 101, are they qualified to write “5 Easy Ways To Deal With Your Anxiety Disorder,” a listicle that you’ve seen in every magazine in your doctor’s office? For me, that’s a Q4.

Has life ever been so free from nuance and ambiguity that a shortlist of solutions will fix every problem?

I don’t want to waste my time reading those stories, and I don’t want to write them. I don’t mean to imply that only a psychiatrist or therapist is qualified to write about anxiety disorders. If a person wants to write, “How My Anxiety Disorder Ruined My Life and How I Learned to Cope,” I am more apt to read it. I want to dig my teeth into how that personal struggle feels. That can be your Q1.

The beauty of Q2 is that you can have a piece in progress that you tussle with over a more extended period. What can you write that’s different or better than most of what you’ve read? You can think about it and incubate ideas. You can search Google Scholar to see what others have written. When I want to review academic research on physician burnout, for example, I type into my search, “physician burnout site:edu” and then I can retrieve only current research on the topic.

I’m not just gay. I’m an old psychiatrist, and I’ve treated psychiatric disorders for a long time. Here’s a Q2, story I wrote about Depression that brought attention to “old” and “psychiatrist,” and I wrote it slowly:

If I want to amplify my thoughts or see what others think about a subject, I will post a somewhat provocative question on Twitter or Facebook, as I did for my stories about circumcision and being “gay fat.” Waiting for responses takes time, and if you wish to quote someone who responded, it takes even more time to request permission from the person who commented.

I keep a file of half-written stories. I continue to work on them as I collect the supporting information, and allow my thoughts to congeal.

I fertilize these essays on Q2 with small stories from my own life to keep them alive and exciting. It seems to be working because several have been curated, and my audience has expanded beyond the LGBTQ community.

Q3. What has touched your life that you think might resonate with others’ lives?

I think of these as feel-good stories, such as my story about cardinals and angels. The idea came to me while sitting on the deck with my husband drinking our morning coffee. I heard a cardinal sing, and I had a warm feeling about my mother. I shared it with Doug, and I could see he shared my sentiment. Perhaps others might feel it, too, I thought, and when I investigated, I found it was far from unique to us. I had sewn a seed.

I had a similar experience when I was riding my bike and lost control on some mud. You can’t steer in the mud, I thought. My next thought was That’s an interesting metaphor. As I continued my ride, I thought of several more ideas, and I quickly wrote the entire essay when I got home. Although a listicle, it is my listicle, not a reproduction.

Every day we have these human experiences. Capture them and put them in Q3 for when you run short of other things to write. These pieces need to capture your emotion as well as that of your reader. By tagging them in areas in which you don’t usually write, you will attract an even broader audience.

Q4. Check these off your list. You’ll never write them, or if you do, no one will want to read them.