Writing, while under the influence
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
I’ve been having a great conversation over the last few days with someone who told me she started listening to my first podcast appearance but then shut it off a few minutes into it.
She’s writing a book, and in one section she addresses the topic of creativity. When it became clear that the podcast address creativity directly, she said NOPE and turned it off.
She didn't want the podcast to influence what she wrote in her book.
I get it.
This is a choice any writer, any creative person, must make. But it can be an especially tough dilemma for new entrepreneurs who want to stake a claim in the marketplace, which feels crowded already without them.
Do I knuckle down and write everything I know and want to impart onto the world, without reading books, without watching movies or TV or the news?
Or do I embrace other people’s influences, their knowledge and ideas, their books, movies, methodologies, frameworks, and channel what resonates from those influences through my own writing?
This has been an obstacle for me, too.
I remember the moment I first had the idea for The Grounded Writer. It sprang from a session I experienced with a mentor this past year. I recognized my reaction to my idea and voiced how it felt wrong to take it as my own. He said: “Are you kidding? I would love for you to teach this. This is your idea. It wouldn’t exist without you.”
He was right, of course. What’s also true is that the idea was influenced by many others I’ve learned from in the last decade. My idea wouldn’t exist without them.
(For more on this, check out “Everything is a Remix Remastered” on YouTube. My recommending this to you is now mirroring how a different mentor recommended it to me.)
(Update: Even “Everything is a Remix” is being updated and remixed for 2021–2022, and that is highly recommended, too.)
So, dear writer. Do your own thing. Be your own person. Use your own voice. Craft with your own talent.
We need you. The fact that we are influenced by others is no matter. What matters more is that you feel your story or message matters enough to share it. Your authentic perspective—distilled from legacy influences—may be exactly what your reader needs right now.
It’s so cool to see this in the Podcasts app!