A 15-Minute Exercise to Discover What You Want to Write About

Use ChatGPT to Define Your Writing Vision and Create Custom Writing Prompts

I start every morning listening to Ed Sheeran. Why am I telling you this? Because the content I consume contains clues about what I want to create. Ed sings, “I'm gonna pick up the pieces and build a Lego house. When things go wrong, we can knock it down.” When Ed talks about challenges, he also talks about hope. His encouraging lyrics remind me of the kind of writer I want to be.

If you’re looking for ideas to write about, I’ll share my approach. My easy process helps you identify topics that are meaningful to you.

You’ll start by mining the material of your favorite content creators. This is because they explore themes you resonate with. Those are themes you may want to explore in your own writing. But specifying a content creator’s core topics can be harder than it seems.

In five minutes, you can use ChatGPT to identify the subjects that your favorite content creators examine. This will help you get started. But if you’ve used ChatGPT, you know that it tends to give generic replies. Here’s the trick with using ChatGPT: You need to ask it a series of questions in a row. Then, it will give you more specific answers. If you stop at the first question, you’ll get a superficial response. But you can improve the usefulness of ChatGPT’s answers by asking it two follow up questions. The third question is the key. I’ll show you how to do this.

I’ll also explain how to use ChatGPT’s answers to draft a one-sentence vision statement for your writing. I’ll walk you through my process to create writing prompts. These prompts will orient your writing toward the themes that fascinate you. This process is a snap and I’m excited to share it with you.

Prepare for ChatGPT

Before I reveal how ChatGPT can describe your desired writing content, answer this question: Who are your favorite writers?

Think outside the box. Your answers can include more than just essayists and authors. They can include singers, cartoonists, and public speakers. Any content creator whose output contains words. My favorite musical artists are Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift. My favorite cartoonists are John Porcellino and Lynda Barry. My favorite essayist is Brianna Wiest. Those are my favorite writers.

For the first exercise, pick one writer.

Why is this limit important before you start using ChatGPT? The key is specificity. As writers, we have unlimited topics we can write about. But this infinity of ideas can paralyze us. For example, in each article, we need to choose one central idea to invest time in. If we include multiple theses in an essay, the article’s argument becomes complicated to write (and read)! By choosing one writer for the first ChatGPT chat, you are already practicing the habit of pinpointing your interests.

Ask ChatGPT for Answers

Are you ready to learn how I use ChatGPT? This AI tool can help you identify writing topics you enjoy. Register for ChatGPT or another Artificial Intelligence tool. For your selected writer, ask ChatGPT these three questions:

1. What does [my favorite writer] write about?

2. What question is often explored in [my favorite writer]’s writing?

3. What topics does [my favorite writer] write about?

Below are ChatGPT’s answers for Ed Sheeran. Notice how the responses get more useful as I ask additional questions.

Keep going after the first question or two. Let me explain. In each chat conversation, ChatGPT remembers its previous answers. By the time you ask the third question, ChatGPT will give you more specificity such as a bullet point list of topics.

When I asked ChatGPT only one question, question 3, below is the answer:

Did you notice the lack of granularity in the above answer? Remember: Ask ChatGPT all three questions. Wait while ChatGPT transcribes each answer. It’s worth it.

Find Clues in ChatGPT Answers

When I studied ChatGPT’s answers for question 3, it reminded me of what I’m passionate about as a human, a reader, and a writer. To reveal these insights about myself, I followed these steps:

1. I saved a screenshot of question 3’s answers. (I used the Snipping Tool because I have a Windows PC.)

2. I asked myself, “Which topics do I resonate with? or “Which topics am I most interested in? As a reader? As a writer?” I circled the related words.

3. From the circled words, which three topics am I the most drawn to? I highlighted them. (When relevant, I chose a specific topic instead of a general topic.)

4. My three highlighted phrases are overcoming obstacles, happiness, and love. I used the three highlighted phrases to complete this sentence, “I write about….” My sentence is “I write about how to overcome obstacles to happiness and self-love.”

5. I reflected on the sentence and asked myself, “Is that sentence true about me as a human, a reader, and/or a writer?” I answered, “Yes.”

By following the above steps, I created a one-sentence writing vision statement. My sentence captures my desired writing topics. Clarifying my wish for my future writing will focus my time on the type of writing I want to produce. Without this focus, I may unconsciously scatter my writing time on a variety of subjects instead of mindfully choosing what is most important to me.

Create Custom Writing Prompts

Now, here’s the practical part of the exercise. This is how I gain direction for material for articles. I turned my one-sentence description into custom writing prompts when I followed these steps:

1. I set a timer. I challenged myself to perform the below steps in ten minutes.

2. I created variations of my one-sentence vision statement by starting it with phrases such as “What are examples of when I…,” “What steps have I taken to…,”  “How have I…,” and “When did I…” I wrote a dozen versions.

3. After I collected twelve ideas, I picked one and circled it.

4. At the top of a new sheet of page, I wrote the selected question: What are examples of when I overcame an obstacle to happiness?

5. I revised the question a few times to make it feel logical or add specificity. For example, I elaborated on the phrase “overcame an obstacle” to create this writing prompt: Give an example of when I could have dwelled in unhappiness, but I chose a healthier habit to practice.

6. I saved my writing prompt in a Google Doc. I named the document “What I Want to Write About” or “Magical Article Ideas the Universe Intended Only for Me.”

Later when I journaled answers to the writing prompt, I identified this experience to write about: When I was in Florida, I crashed my bike. I could have relived this unhappy expensive experience by retelling everyone about my accident. But instead, I chose to focus on the joyful vacation highlights. That mindful choice is the secret to creating happier memories and a happier life. I developed that idea into my article Five Steps to Happier Memories.

The Benefits of a Timer

You may be wondering, “Why is it important to set a timer? Can you really accomplish those steps in ten minutes?”

I set a time limit because constraints help me to write ideas down. Any ideas. When I jot something onto my paper, I move forward. But when I noodle over ideas in my head, I waste time. This overthinking keeps me stuck on a certain step in the process. When I write things down on paper, even if they are “crappy” ideas or fragmented sentences, at least I have something written on the paper. It’s easier to take incremental steps to revise something awkward into something useful than it is to move from nothing to something helpful.

Here’s how I’m able to perform the above steps in ten minutes:

• I don’t worry about grammar. I don’t wait for the “perfect” questions to form in my mind before I write them down. I give myself permission to write down clunky questions that don’t make sense.

• I recognize that the questions are duplicative. I don’t judge the replicas. I list them all. I remind myself that sometimes I need to ask the same question multiple times in different ways to get actionable guidance. This is similar to how ChatGPT gave a general answer when I posed only one question. But ChatGPT gave specific bullet points after I asked three similar questions. The longer ChatGPT or my brain thinks about a particular topic, the more time it has to dig deeper for more examples.

• I let the questions and writing prompt ideas be run-on sentences with bad grammar. I remind myself that the writing prompts are for my eyes only. I’m not publishing them. My goal is to compose one or two sentences that can become a useful custom writing prompt to inspire ideas.

Your Turn

If someone asked you, “What do you write about?”, are you able to easily answer the question? More importantly, if you can answer the question easily for yourself, you create a compass to guide your writing path. That is how a one-sentence writing vision statement can help. It can create a framework to identify and assess which topics you’ll write about.

If you’re ready to uncover clues for future article topics, follow the steps explained in this article. Over time, you’ll accumulate a list of custom journaling prompts. When it’s time to brainstorm article ideas, open your list. When you feel stuck, open your list. When you have a few spare minutes, open your list, pick a writing prompt, and journal answers in your notebook.

P.S. I may start posting every other week. As a result, my publishing frequency may be somewhere between weekly and biweekly. Thank you so much for being part of my newsletter community! :) :)