Sort your forks

Writing is like organizing kitchen drawers.

Stick with me here. When I teach writing classes at the community college and library, it’s around a style of writing, such as kids books or Substack or westerns or food writing, which gives a hook of interest and a focal point for my students.

Typically, my students register to learn about the how: the buttons on Substack or the methods for childrens’ book publishing or landing a gig as a restaurant reviewer.

Spoiler alert: the more important question is always the why and the what.

If you don’t know why you’re writing, or what you want to write about, you can have every piece of the how figured out, and still not be successful.

So, how do we figure out the what and the why?

I think it’s like sorting silverware.

In your imaginary brain-drawer, you have spoons for soup and forks for pasta and knives for the soft sides of pears and the spreading of butter on crusty bread. We might find a few memories in there too: baby spoons you can’t seem t…