Why confident strategists freeze when asked to write (and what to do about it)

Introduction

You'd be surprised how often I meet senior, experienced and confident people in marketing who become a shadow of themselves whenever I ask them to write about what they think.

That psychological shift intrigues me. So much so that I’m organising a panel on writing habits for strategists. But before that, I’d like to share what 15+ years writing has taught me about, er, writing.

Why marketing strategists struggle with writing

Marketing strategists struggle with writing for six common reasons: no time, no energy, nothing new to say, fear of judgment, or simply not knowing where to start. The fix isn't a perfect writing routine. It's a set of small, repeatable habits that fit around real working life. Below are a few that work for me.

The real value of writing: process over AI

A lot of people might ask whether they should just use AI to write everything. Short answer: use it to start, not to finish. Get Claude or NotebookLM to generate initial takes on your topic. Then riff on them, either by challenging them or crafting them like mad.

The thinking you do in response to AI’s output is where your actual point of view lives. Writing is thinking things through. When you write about something, you’re helping your body and mind know that thing a bit more intimately, and that allows you to develop the conviction you need to truly stand by your words.

The opposite of this is getting AI to write everything you do, and in the process learning or retaining nothing. There’s a difference between reading about the rules of a sport and feeling good at playing it. Writing is the exact same thing. Process precedes result.

7 habits to build a sustainable writing process

1. How to build a writing habit when you have no time

“Where do you find the time to write?" is something people ask me. Well, I don’t. I run a business. I have a family. I like having some me time. I don’t sit down to do 3-hour sessions every day, non stop.

There are no big rituals. There are loads of small ones. I write when I can. My process, like water, flows into everyday existence. I've written on my desk. On the bus. At airports. In coffee shops. On my sofa, after the girls have gone to bed. Watching TV. In total silence.

I've written for 40 minutes straight. But also for 14 minutes. Sometimes I write something in 3 minutes, leave it, and pick it up again later. There are no rules. No grand design. Just a relatively high alertness.

If I’ve got time to write, I do it. It’s like movement. You don’t need to become a gymmaxxing person to feel you’re moving. Just integrate movement here and there in your daily life. Exact same with words.

2. Why writing more is the fastest way to write better

The most pressing thing I go back to is the idea that you need to write well in order to write. I call bullshit. I think you need to write loads to write, and then over time the ‘well written’ comes out.

Quantity precedes quality, and the more you do it the more you feel used to doing it. And the more you feel used to doing it, the more natural it feels and the more you develop your taste for what’s good.

And once you do that, you start being more rigorous with what you put out. But only after you’ve done loads of it and developed your own sense of taste. Some people are naturally talented and it just comes out brilliantly. I prefer to assume I’m not one of those people.

I’m fully conscious that 90% of everything I’ve ever written is probably not very good, but I had to go through that in order to get to the 10% that has made some small difference out there. That’s the ratio.

Quantity is the soil you need to grow quality. This works best when you have feedback, but you can only get feedback if you put some of those words out there. So write un-preciously, share generously, and let the quantity eventually help quality emerge. It often does.

3. Stop writing content, document your work instead

This is one of the least used tricks I see in the book. You’d think you need to sit down and write content and ‘lead thoughts’, but in reality this is the sort of stuff AI can now churn out in 2 minutes.

Instead, document your work. Share what your clients are asking you, and how you’re framing the discussion. Share a win. A loss. A memory of this one time you did something great with someone else.

The trick here is that you’re not creating anything new, you’re documenting what’s already there. Sometimes you have a chat with someone that blows your mind. Write about that. It’s enough to start.

Bonus points is that if you frame your writing off the back of lived experience, you’ll be doing it in a way that AI can’t. It doesn’t know what it learned last Tuesday while running a workshop or digesting a debrief, because for AI Tuesdays are not a thing.

Common pushback: you’re NDA’d. I get it. I’m not saying spill the beans on every detail of your client work. But you can tell a story about an exchange, a model, a reframe, that doesn’t give away confidential details. You can tell broad stories of how you worked through a question without giving away the full answer.

4. The texting trick that kills writer's block

The best answer to writer’s block is to start writing. The best answer to start writing is to not think about writing as writing at all. Confusing much? It’s simple: think of it as if you were texting. Yes, texting.

I’ve seen so many smart people send really smart text-like messages, or short email-like messages, that contain more insight than entire essays. You’ve probably seen it or done it as well. This is your aim.

Whenever I get intimidated by needing to write something, I just think of the tweet or text version of the point and go from there. All it takes is one good sentence after another. And for that, you’re better off starting with a series of one-liner sentences about your main point.

Before you know it, you’ll have 10 of those and boom. That’s a post. It’s one of the reasons I like writing lists of sub-head heavy pieces. It helps me keep one point to a few core sentences, and move on.

5. Why writing for one person beats writing for everyone

Don't think of 'readers'. Think of one reader. The person who hired you. The person you had lunch with. Your arch-nemesis. You, five years ago. You don't always need the same reader. But aim for one.

We often stop ourselves from writing down words because we’re afraid of the invisible crowd who will punish us for being extremely wrong about something. Yeah, people don’t care. Not helpful.

You know what’s helpful? Writing as if you were dedicating it to a single person. This is how I write every email in my newsletter. I think of a pal, client, colleague or arch-nemesis, and write them an email.

The fact others are reading is a magnificent bonus on top of it all.

6. Turn your voice notes into your next piece

All of the above may still make you cringe at the thought of writing down things that came out of your head. This is ok. Try a different process. Get a voice recorder out, and record yourself talking.

Then, take that recording and get an AI tool to strip it back to the bare bones of what you’re saying. Now write those same points but in your voice. The writing block is gone, because you’re now editing.

See how you just played your own brain with some modern tech?

7. Find your writing process and make it sustainable

There is no one style of writing, just like there is no one process of writing. The single best starting point is to experiment with a few different ones, and then double down on the one that works for you.

Some of us like to have a broad stroke structure we write to. Others like to riff until we see a structure emerging. Neither are better or worse, they’re just more or less useful to your style of doing things.

I tend to be a “fuck around and find out” kind of writing person. I start writing, see what comes out, very stream of consciousness (just like this sentence was). And then I go back and edit it like mad. There’s no masterplan. There’s improv and making sense afterward.

This also helps ensure that you can keep the process sustainable. Don’t worry about what a perfect day of writing looks like. Think about the process you could embrace even after a difficult day.

Conclusion: Personality not perfection

Remember that your writing will never be perfect. It cannot be. Perfect writing has no personality. It may be correct, or hooky, but it's in danger of feeling like slop. Fuck slop, go for soul. And so does the world. It’s also the sort of stuff you get hired for, so don’t lose it.

Only you can know the reasons why you write. But part of it, I’d imagine, is to build your own credibility and get people more familiar with your thinking. So ensure the real you comes through in some capacity, instead of a diluted version that feels AI-generated.

I hope some of the above advice, and our upcoming panel on how to build a writing habit, helps you get there.