💬 You Don't Actually Hate Writing

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Hi there,

My little sister Lea is in Virginia Beach. She’s 14 out of 16 weeks into marathon training and today is a Saturday, which means it’s a long run day. On the agenda? A whopping 20 miles (I’m sweating just typing this).

At first, the run is fabulous. The two espresso GUs she’d had (AKA energy gel) are doing their job. But 2.5 hours later, Lea’s panicking. Although the run is done, she ran out of water at mile 15 and is so parched she can’t see straight.

Lea crawls into her boyfriend’s apartment. Immediately, she guzzles liters upon liters of cold water.

But it doesn’t sit right with her stomach, one that’s full of GU and now, water.

Seconds later, Lea projectile vomits clumps of espresso GU all over her boyfriend’s carpet. She spends the next half hour cleaning up the melange of bile and energy gel before passing out for four hours.

Running: Not for the faint-hearted.

When Lea tells me this story, I’m horrified. “Jesus. It’s no wonder why people hate running,” I say.

Lea shakes her head. “People don’t hate running. They hate not being able to run.”

And you know what – Lea is onto something. Because the feeling of uneasiness you get when you’re acclimating to something new is applicable for many fields, including entrepreneurship and (you guessed it) writing.

Chances are when you started your writing business you struggled. You had to:

• Pitch (and get rejected) countless times.

• Deal with clueless clients who drove you up the walls.

• Spend hundreds of hours improving your craft through trial and error.

And maybe, there was a point where you wanted to give up. “I hate being a freelance writer. This is way too hard. I’m not cut out for this.”

But as Lea remind us – you don’t “hate” freelance writing. You’re just navigating the uneasy transition that comes with learning something new. Instead of questioning your career path or capabilities, recognize this time is simply part of a larger learning curve.

Once you get the hang of running your business, you’ll start to love what you’ve created. Luckily, the path to get there doesn’t involve nearly anything as dramatic as an upset stomach (phew).

✍️ Quick Writing Tip

Use the negative instead of the positive in storytelling. The negative hints at what that person or thing could have been – and indicates the potential transformation that awaits.

Example:

❌ She was poor, unintelligent, and unattractive.

✅ She wasn’t rich, she wasn’t smart, and no one found her beautiful.

^{* Another great tip from Mathew Dick’s Storyworthy! I highly recommend.}

🥒 Content Diet - Tools Edition

Switching things up a little today! Here are some of my favorite tools that I use every day as a freelance writer.

💾 Kindle Scribe (16G) – I love this thing and use it for two big reasons. First, to jot down notes while I read to better retain information. Second, for creating outlines. Something about writing down your thoughts helps you organize them much better.

🤖 GPT4 – The only AI worth the $20 monthly subscription. GPT 4 is great at rewriting and simplifying sentences, helping me write ~30% faster. However, GPT 4 isn’t able to create compelling outlines or connect ideas.

🎨 Midjourney — Great for creating consistent imagery across newsletters, social media, and more. It’s $8 per month and it’s super fun to play with.

That’s only the tip of the iceberg – if you’re interested in seeing my full tool stack, just hit reply and let me know.

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a beautiful week, wherever you are.

I’m headed to France to visit family before going to Ireland to run a half marathon. I’ve been training for 8 weeks and I’m very excited – I’ll keep you posted on how it goes (pray for me no vomit is involved).

If you enjoyed this newsletter, why not share it with a writer friend? 🙂 

Stay Creative,

Alice 💌