Everybody Writes
Everybody Writes is a phenomenal piece of literature to showcase why writing is much more important now in the digital age. Content comes in all forms such as YouTube videos, Spotify podcasts, Wordpress blog posts, and many others. Writing matters more than ever now! Handley walks the reader through different viewpoints of writing such as how to write in the real world, grammatical considerations, and tools for writing. Whatever form of content you’re creating, I would recommend this book as it provides an additional tool for curating rich content.
“What matters now isn’t storytelling: what matter is telling a true story well”
Everybody Writes was one of the books that allowed me to push beyond seeing pictures and videos as only those descriptors. The content reminded me of a viewpoint where imagery and visuals are another form of content to appease the visual and listening senses. The specs themselves will come with time, but what matters most is the story curated from the box you encapsulate. While exploring Florence, I viewed my cinematography in that way of telling my own story.
Developing the cinema content then led to additional points of the book such as:
How are you providing value to your customer?
How are you enriching their experience in life?
Why should they care?
I addressed these considerations when adding additional text and location based details for those who travel to Florence in the future.
Top 3 Lessons
If you don’t care about your content, then who will
Everything is content
Start telling the stories only you can tell
Lesson 1: If you don’t care about your content, then who will
Content you write is your own journal of these experiences. The pieces you remember and record are a chance to revisit those moments in time that allow you to remember them since you are revisiting these moments. When you write about that content, they are your memories, and if you don’t care about the content itself, others will follow that same viewpoint since you are writing it with that view in mind. Own your memories, write them full-heartedly, and treasure that moment where you revisit those special pieces in your life.
Lesson 2: Everything is content
Imagine you are walking down a road, and you stop dead in your heels to absorb all the small details happening around you. You can talk about the sounds such as the car gas engine, or the colors of the buildings and how they are architected. Maybe, you could even talk about the putrid odor of human feces! You could dive deeper and deeper into that one moment to put your customer in the view of what you see to allow them to journey with you. In contrast, you could span your story over years on end and focus on different key moments such as conversations you had, reflective moments alone, or random sirens passing you by on the streets. With both perspectives, you can paint different stories using the provided content to an infinite spectrum as there is so much to describe.
Lesson 3: Start telling the stories only you can tell
No one will know your full story, not your friends, not your family, not your kids, not your wife. All of us have moments where people pop into our lives and everything before are moments in space where you cannot 100% recreate everything that happened. You can encapsulate as much of the setting as you can, but there are always small details that you can’t recreate. The experience is yours alone. You are the steward of the story! It is yours and yours alone. I along with many others would love to hear that story. The story is in your hands for what comes out of it.
Conclusion
Everybody Writes is a piece that allows you to see the world from the vantage point of continual content. The book portrays new methodologies and provides you tools to refine your own voice with the material you produce. Everything you experience is worth sharing, and this book dives into making it something for generations on end to imagine through your lens.
Want to curate amazing content?
Read the book here: Kindle | Hardcover | Audiobook
I’d love to hear your learnings from the book! Tag me on an Instagram story once you finish at @kevintptran.
