Been There, Written That

Writing

A writer laments the lack of original writing

I’ve been writing for a long, long time — more than 30 years all told, with the last 15 almost exclusively online. And it’s started to get to the point where there’s not much new around.

It seems the same requests come all the time: thought leadership content, writing on high authority sites, writing like [insert name of latest guru here]. Isn’t there any originality left?

Sure, I contribute to the problem. After all, I’m a writer for hire and some people want content in a particular way. But if I get bored writing it, don’t others get bored reading it?

When I research articles, the list of sources that comes up in Google is likely as not to include something I’ve written or ghostwritten. Even if it’s not, a lot of articles cover the same old ground.

Because while some things evolve quickly, like new technology, others really don’t. The basic principles of networking and marketing haven’t changed much — we’ve just moved them online.

Sometimes I think we need less polish and more personality — more reality.

How can we do better? Telling stories helps. Making the professional personal means people can relate to it. As humans, we’re more interested in the experiences of people like us than all the marketing in the world. So, where I can, I include anecdotes to bring articles to life.

But still, sometimes I wonder whether online content has become too self-referential. And that’s a strange and troubling realization for a professional writer.

Am I the only one to feel this way?