you don't have a writing problem, you have a "what do I actually think" problem
Published: June 25, 2026 • 5 min read
You don't have a writing problem. You have a "what do I actually think" problem, and a blank page is the worst possible place to solve it.
So before you write a single post, I want you to go do something else entirely. Go argue with strangers.
Okay, that's a bit dramatic, so let me be clear that I'm not telling you to pick fights or troll people online. What I mean is that you should go into the comment sections of people whose work you respect and start responding to their ideas, honestly, in your own words.
Agree with them and say why. Disagree with them and say why. Add the thing they missed. Push back on the thing you think is wrong. Do it again tomorrow, and again the day after.
I'm convinced this is one of the best ways to learn how to write, and almost nobody recommends it.
Why Comments, Of All Things
Here's the thing about staring at a blank page when you want to start writing. The blank page gives you nothing to react to. It just sits there asking you to produce a fully formed opinion out of thin air, and most people freeze because they don't actually know what they think yet. That's the real problem. It was never that you couldn't write. It's that you didn't know what you wanted to say.
A comment fixes that, because a comment does not require you to stare at a blank page. It's a response to a page filled with words.
When you write a comment, you are forced to engage critically with someone else's thought process. You have to actually understand what they said before you can respond to it. You have to figure out whether you agree, and that one question, do I actually agree with this, is the question that cracks everything open.
Because as you sit there trying to respond honestly, something happens. You start to notice your own reactions. You start to feel the spots where you nod and the spots where something in you goes "wait, no." And the spots where something in you goes "wait, no" are gold. That is your opinion announcing itself. You didn't construct it. You discovered it, by rubbing your brain up against someone else's.
Do this enough times and a pattern shows up. You realize you keep pushing back on the same kinds of ideas. You keep adding the same kind of missing piece. You keep getting fired up about the same topics. That pattern is what you should be writing about. You found your subject (or subjects for polymaths like me) not by brainstorming it, but by reacting your way into it.
This Is Not How I Started, By the Way
I want to be honest, because I'd be a hypocrite otherwise. This is not how I started writing, and the real story is a lot messier.
Last year, after graduating, I sent hundreds of job applications into the void for 40 days straight and got mostly silence back. So I stopped applying, and I gave myself 50 days to build public proof of work instead. In that stretch I experimented heavily with AI, learned things, built things, broke things, and documented the entire messy journey as it happened. And somewhere in those 50 days, without ever planning to, I fell in love with writing. I have not stopped since.
So no, I did not earn my voice in the comments. I earned it by jumping off a cliff with no plan and writing on the way down.
But here is what I've learned from watching other people try to start: most people cannot jump off the cliff cold. They are not under the pressure of a tight deadline to create something out of nothing like I did. They just have this vague itch to "start writing" and no idea what to write about. For that person, the comment method is the gentlest way I know to start, because it's how you find your voice without having to throw yourself off anything to do it.
But Why Write at All
Fair question. Why bother with any of this?
Because writing is how you practice the art of articulation.
I don't mean writing in the "become a famous writer" sense. I mean writing as the single best tool I've found for figuring out what I actually think. When a thought lives only in your head, it gets to stay vague and impressive and untested. The second you try to write it down, the bluff gets called. You realize you can't actually explain the thing you were so sure you understood. Writing exposes the gap between knowing something and being able to say it.
And being able to say it, clearly, on demand, to a stranger who owes you no patience? That's a skill that pays you back in every other room you ever walk into, whether it's a meeting, a pitch, or a hard conversation you'd rather not have. Articulation is not a writer's skill. It's a thinker's skill. Writing just happens to be the cheapest gym to build it in.
The Part Where It Stings (Good)
Now, when you write online, you get feedback... 'Surprise, surprise...' And some of it will sting.
Someone will misread you on purpose. Someone will be condescending. Someone will pick the one weak sentence out of a thousand good ones and make it their whole personality for the afternoon. It will not feel good the first time.
I need you to understand that that's a feature, not a bug.
Because every time you put words out and someone pushes back and you survive it, you build a muscle most people never build: the muscle for handling negative feedback. And once you have it, it changes how you move through everything. You stop needing every idea to be bulletproof before you'll say it out loud. You stop letting the fear of one rude reply keep you silent for a year. The sting gets smaller every single time, and your courage gets bigger in exact proportion.
You cannot build that muscle in private. You have to get it by putting real work in front of real people who didn't ask for it. The comment section, again, is the low-stakes version. A full blog post is the heavier weight. Either way, you're training the same thing.
The Reason That Matters Most to Me
But here's the one I really want you to hear.
If you've gone through your whole life feeling like you never quite found your people, the ones who actually get the way your brain works, the ones you can talk to without translating yourself first, then this is for you.
When you write online, the algorithm does a thing no party or networking event ever did for you. It quietly goes out and finds the people who think like you and pulls them toward your words. You don't have to scan a room. You don't have to perform small talk. You just have to write honestly enough, consistently enough, and the platform's algorithm becomes the matchmaker, sorting the entire internet and delivering the handful of humans who light up at exactly the thing you light up at.
I have watched this happen to me. People I would have never crossed paths with in real life found me through words I almost didn't publish. The algorithm did the job that real life never managed to do for me. It found my people and brought them to me.
That, more than the articulation, more than the feedback muscle, is why I keep telling everyone to write.
So, Where to Start
Don't open a blank document. Not yet.
Go read three things from people whose work you respect. Find the spot where something in you goes "wait, no" or "yes, and here's the part you missed." Write that. Post it as a comment. Do it again tomorrow.
Somewhere in the middle of encouraging strangers while adding your personal perspective or disagreeing with them, you'll notice you've stopped wondering what you think. You've also stopped wondering what to write about. You'll know. And on the day the comment feels too small to hold everything you suddenly have to say, that's the day you open the blank document.
And in that moment, it won't be blank for long.
I Turned This Into an 8-Day Course
If reading this made you want to actually try the comment method, I built the easiest possible way in for you.
It's a free 8-day email course on how to comment like a thinker instead of a performer. You get one idea a day and one small practice prompt a day, and the whole thing is short enough that you'll actually finish it. It teaches the exact skill this whole post is about, which is reading what someone actually said, spotting what they left out, and responding like a thinking human instead of someone performing for the algorithm.
If you want in, Click here to start Day 1 of the free commenting course.
As always, thanks for reading.