The Evil Twin Theory of Providing Content

Providing content, or writing as it was quaintly called in most of the last century, is one of those things that seems one way but is actually another. Most of those unacquainted with content provision harbor romantic notions about how it happens. This idealized version is not exactly inaccurate. It runs in three steps:

1. Inspiration (possibly divine but at least involving something supernatural)
2. Creation
3. Adulation

Those three things really do happen. You do get an idea, create some content, and perhaps in a perfect or lucky world, you get some recognition or at least money. But every one of these three stages has a darker side. I call it the Evil Twin.

Inspiration implies that ideas are handed to you on a silver platter and that they are all wonderful. In truth, ideas either bombard you from the heavens like hail or evade you so completely that you need a bloodhound to find them. But ideas do occur and the more you know how to "get" them, the more you'll have.

The trouble is that not all ideas are equal. My ratio is about 10 or 11 to 1 which means I get 10 or more clunkers for every viable idea. The evil twin to inspiration is market research. You have to know what ideas to follow and which ones to let wither and die.

This can be harder than you think, since we tend to fall in love with our ideas. Hey, content provision is not for wimps.

The creative process is supposed to happen in some dreamlike trance where talented writers just let the stuff "flow" from their keyboards. Many non-writers ask writers if they know what they're going to write before they sit down at the keyboard. Here is the answer: YES.

The evil twin of creation is doing research, gathering facts and sub-ideas, organizing it, and building a structure. Most of writing is actually done prior to making contact with a keyboard. You need to find something to say and lay out the architecture as to how you're going to say it.

Ouch, that's work. The actual putting of words on paper or pixels on screen is the final step and it's more of a flourish.

Finally, there is adulation. People think good content will be admired. It won't be. You have to get over that part. The evil twin of adulation is that content is functional. You need to assign it a function and assess it by how well it performs that function. Does it persuade? Does it inform? Does it sell?

Becoming an able content provider means that you have to make friends with the evil twins.