How I Decide WHAT to Write

Very important advice from me about how to move forward out of a stall.

People ask me “How do I become a writer?”

Actually, people almost never ask me that, especially not since we went on strike. But if they did, I would definitely answer “Well, an important first step is you need to sit down and write something.” And I would watch them roll their eyes, knowing in my heart that the real question they wanted to ask was “How do I become a writer without having to actually write?” A lot of people who want to be a writer hate writing. But then again, so do a lot of writers. It comes with the territory. So the answer I used to give, in this imaginary conversation, would have been, “It pains me to tell you that writing plays an important part in the job of being a writer. You can’t remove it entirely.”

Although now with the intrusion of A.I. and Chatbots, I guess even that isn’t a given. Issues like ‘Can writers be replaced entirely?’ are at the very core of why the billionaire CEO’s like Bob Iger and David Zaslav, who run the streaming platforms, haven’t bothered to negotiate a settlement with the Writer’s Guild and/or Sag/Aftra yet. The way they see it, the fewer the human beings standing in the way of them cashing their massive paychecks, the brighter the future of this world will be.

I personally do not think human writers are ever going to really be replaced by A.I. writing programs except for maybe in the creation of those kinds of pieces of writing that pile up on tables and keep me from having a place to eat my dinner. There is a good chance that A.I. could write every page of “GuestInformant”, AND the instruction booklet that came with my new hot water heater AND the entire future archive of People magazine and no one would be any the wiser. But I continue to believe that people seeking immersion and escape into interesting ideas (both on the page and on the screen) are still going to need to make contact with work written by humans. It’s one of the few things we humans actually know how to do!!

With that in mind, I now present a little piece I put together, titled “HOW I DECIDE WHAT TO WRITE”. And amazingly enough, that is also what the piece is about. A mere coincidence or synchronicity? Who can say? But please join me now as I share, in just TWO MINUTES AND 13 SECONDS, my secret uncannily scientific and fool proof methodology of figuring out how to write yet another thing after I have finished writing the last thing. It has worked for me for 40 plus years and NOW it can work for you!