Day 45

Writing is a skill. In here I send notes of my writing from the 50 days of writing course by David Perell, to reflect, develop and build my writing style.

Day 45
Photo by Dan Meyers / Unsplash

In the 45th email from 50 days of writing, David Perell talks about how to get Wonky.

In this email, David explores the idea of Wonkiness. He provides an example of Patrick O'shaughnessy who runs one of the largest investing podcasts. Patrick has built an audience with his wonkiness as the investing podcasts has been the opposite of wonk-free, lowest-common-denominator publications.

He says Patrick was the only investing and business podcast as there was no podcast like it on the internet.

David further explains -

Wonky people have an enthusiastic interest in the specialized details of their domain. They ignore the social incentives that shame people for having unique interests. Wonkiness is the opposite of how you’re trained in school, where you’re taught to follow the syllabus and repeat exactly what the teacher said in the exact way they said it.

Wonkiness is the hidden algorithm for fresh ideas. It helps us liberate ourselves from the handcuffs of precedent and in our over-socialized world. This type of writing will always be rare and precious, David says.



My thoughts:  

This email asks us to think about the strategies very hard and think about the unique 'wonkiness' to the writings.

This wonkiness is a way to bring ideas to life. We need to constantly think of who we are writing to and how do we like them to read it.

So, I would suggest to have a wonky look about ideas. Combined with the Wonkiness, if you have looked for ideas at places that no one else is looking for. Few of the writers and storytellers who come to mind with the wonkiness is Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, Durjoy Datta(his romance novel has ideas from college that no one ever thought about) and many others.  

To summarize, in order to get ideas that are unique and no one ever talked about, you need to -

  1. Be wonky i.e. look for ways to write about an article by dissecting the strategy.
  2. Look for things where no one else is looking.
  3. Build outlines based on Islands and Bridges framework.
  4. Edit the article by sharing it with a friend or have the internet friends let you know.

Writing online has it perk and being different from the crowd will definitely bring the better results and outcomes to you.

Thank you for reading.

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