How do you write what people actually want to read?

Honestly, I started journaling when I was younger. I wasn’t aware of what or how I was writing, but I knew writing out my feelings felt good to me. Barely a handful of people read what I wrote and encouraged me to keep writing.

I decided to go to college for nursing and had to take an English class. At the end of the class, my teacher said, “I know you’re going to school to be a nurse but when you have time, I want to encourage you to take a novel-writing class.”

She taught me to describe something in a way that would help the reader feel what I was feeling. For example, instead of just saying it was a dark night and there was a white phone, I might say, “The dark night felt like a spotlight on the white phone.”

In this class, we also read a book. I had maybe only read two or three books, including the one she had us read, which was called Dead End in Norvelt. It was probably meant for ages 11 to 18, if that. Those books were easy for me to read, so if I was going to start writing, I decided I would write about things I understood, like lessons I’ve learned from things I’ve done, and I would keep it easy to read.

I don’t always know what someone else wants to read. I just know what I want to say. I write about things I’ve experienced, things I’ve learned, feelings I’ve had, and sometimes just a thought that gets stuck in my head and won’t leave me alone.

I try to write in a way that is easy for me to understand, because I figure there might be someone else out there who understands it too.

Maybe that’s what my teacher saw in me all those years ago. I wasn’t trying to be a writer. I was just trying to put my feelings into words.

And maybe you don’t have to know exactly what people want to read. Maybe you just have to be willing to tell your story and hope that somewhere in your words, someone finds a little piece of themselves.