Writing from the Core

When you can't find an answer, maybe you're asking the wrong question

“I write a few things online” - I often say when that fact becomes relevant in a conversation.

I say it in a way like I'm devaluing it, as if it’s something my 8-year-old son could do. Paradoxically, I’m looking for cheers, claps, and celebrations, because most of the people I talk to about this don't publish anything online other than fake Instagram stories and shallow Facebook posts, so I'm secretly expecting them to admire my courage to publicly share my ideas with the world.

“Look at me, I’m so special!”, my eyes scream in silence.

I hate this, but I can’t help it, because they are both true.

It has never been easier to send ideas to the world through your fingertips – my 8-year-old can actually do it – and it is a courageous thing to do when you do it properly, when you show your naked mind to anyone who chooses to read your work instead of scrolling a dozen TikTok videos of half-naked bodies.

Right after I tell people about this, they immediately ask “What do you write about?”

And then I start to rumble. 

I tell them I write about personal growth – “but not the cheesy stuff!”, I always emphasize – and that I also write about relationships, parenting, habits and routines, books, and writing… and it is roughly at this point that I begin to notice a vague look on their eyes.

For someone that uses the line “Personal Growth, without boring you to death” as a slogan, I’m boring AF.

To change this I decided to narrow down the range of topics I write about, which made me think: what do I want to write about? What sort of ideas do I want to share?

After a long time pondering about this, I realized I was making the wrong questions.

Some of my most read stories are about relationships and parenting, but I don’t want to write about that for the purpose of teaching about relationships and parenting! I believe both are very subjective and if a lot of people enjoyed those stories was not because I was teaching them how to be a partner or a parent, but because I was being true and passionate about who I was talking about.

Readers can smell with their eyes, and they’ll know if what you’re telling is from the heart or if it’s just BS, and I can assure you that readers will choose a technically weak story over great BS, as long as the writer had bleed to the paper, metaphorically speaking, both the blood and the paper.

I also tried to write about productivity and writing, hoping that I could help struggling authors while I was helping myself, but though my intentions were good, the heart wasn’t there, so no blood could be pumped to the piece.

Narrow down Danny, you have to narrow down. Aim to the center, there’s where the heart rests, there’s where the heart beats. At the core.

My core has always been helping. I’m a people pleaser, and I genuinely love to help people solve their problems, so that’s where I’m aiming, that’s where my writing will continue to flow.

“What do you write about?”

I write about everything because what matters is not the what, but the how, and I write with heart.

I write about everything, as long as it has meaning to me, and I help people do the same.