What Should I Write About?

What should you write about? This is a question I hear a lot – usually from software developers. I’ve said it, several times myself. You know what I realized? No matter what profession you choose, or field of study you pursue, one thing will always hold true. In your understanding of a subject, you’re always going to be behind one group of people, and ahead of another. Somehow, you tend to recognize the former, and forget the later. This becomes abundantly clear when trying to decide what to write about. You know that you want to write an article for the website, but you can’t think of a topic. Everything that you consider, feels as if it has already been said. Not only did someone else say it first, but they said it better. So, what can you say? What value can you possibly add?

Remember the second group of people? Someone else has yet to learn about the things you know. They are unaware of the obstacles ahead. Sometimes they don’t have the right words to ask the right questions. So where should you start? You should write about the thing you just learned. That project you just worked on. You probably got stuck on something. What was it? What was not obvious about the solution? Why was it difficult? How did you resolve it? That’s what you write about. Describe your objective, setup the problem, identify the different options you explored, and present your solution.

That’s not the only approach, of course. It is an effective one though. Here’s some other ideas if you get stuck:

• Read an article or a book, and write an analysis of it
• Learn a new process, tool, or technology
• What events are happening in your industry?
• What issues are your industry dealing with?
• Do you wish a technology you use was better?

Consider that although a topic has already been written about, that you may have a different approach. Your background and experience give you a unique perspective. That might be the very thing that helps someone else understand the topic.

Now lets pretend you have the topic. You may wondering – Is it worth your time to write an article? Well, most of the time, your audience is someone you don’t know. They perform a search, they click a link in the search results, and end up on your site. Your article might be just the answer they need. However, it’s also possible, that you may be writing for your future self. We often revisit the same problems over time. If you can provide a solution for future reference – why not? You did the hard part already. You might as well take the time to write it down.