One question beginners who can't decide what to write should ask themselves before starting

You decide to write, open an app on your smartphone, and 30 minutes pass. In the end, you close the draft without having written a single character.

It's not that you don't have any ideas. In fact, you have a vague idea of what you want to write, but you just haven't narrowed down where to start. When I first started, I would come home from my commute on weekday nights and repeat this every single time.

At times like that, if you have one question to ask yourself before you start writing, the time you spend stuck will decrease significantly.

Why can't you write when things are vague?

The cause of not being able to write is often not a lack of ideas, but that the theme is too broad. If you say, "I'll write about monetizing on note," the scope is too wide, and you won't know where to begin. This is the first reason why your hands stop.

Another cause is that you haven't decided who you are writing for. If you can't see the face of the person you're writing to, you can't judge the tone of your words or how much you need to explain. That is why the first character won't come out.

Looking at it as a mechanism, a broad theme and an invisible audience—when these two overlap, your hands stop even though you have the desire to write. Conversely, if you separate the theme and the audience and narrow each one down to a single point, your hands will start moving. The order is to first decide the scope, then decide the audience.

There is only one question to ask before you start writing

That question is this: "What was the one thing I wanted to know most a year ago?"

This question works because it narrows down both the theme and the audience at once. The audience is a single reader with a clear face: "myself from a year ago." The theme is decided as one specific point: "what that person was struggling with at the time."

The order for turning questions into articles

There is a specific order for how to use this. First, write down as many things as you can remember that you were struggling with a year ago. Be as specific as possible, such as "I didn't know how to write a title" or "I was confused about where to draw the line between paid and free content."

Next, choose the one from that list that you feel most capable of writing about today. Once you've chosen, double-check that this is something your past self from a year ago really wanted to know. Finally, write it as if you were writing to "the me from a year ago." The explanation will naturally have just the right level of politeness. This sequence is a repeatable process that you can use as many times as you like.

Before: "I'll write something about monetizing on note." After: "I'll write about how I used to get stuck on titles every time a year ago." Even with the same amount of time, the latter will help you come up with that first line.

The mindset of digging into your own experiences to find what to write about is something I acquired by reading several books on writing techniques. Since reading them, the time I spend worrying about not having any ideas has decreased.

Once you master this method of digging for ideas, you can use the same question for both free article topics and paid article planning, making it much easier to create a path toward monetization.

There is also a little trick to turn the answer to your question directly into a title. If you want to use a fill-in-the-blank format, put the one thing you struggled with most at the time into the blank of "The story of how I got stuck on '______' a year ago." Specific words like "how to write a title," "the line between paid and free," or "the very first article" will reach readers who are stuck in the same place. By narrowing down a vague theme to the specific problem of one person you can visualize, the first line you write will feel much lighter.

The reach of one question, seen through arithmetic

Let's do a little math here.

The things you struggled with a year ago aren't just one or two. When you write them all out, you'll usually find more than ten. Each one of those can become the topic for an article.

If you have 10 ideas, that's five weeks' worth of content at a pace of two posts per week. If you keep it up for half a year, you'll never run out of ideas just by repeating that question a few times.

As your posts accumulate, a few of them will become gateways that lead readers to your paid articles. It's a quiet entry point for monetization, like 500 yen x 5 copies a month = 2,500 yen.

Even if you don't have many followers yet, the path to selling articles grows on top of the number of pieces you've written. Realistically, earning 100,000 yen a month lies beyond this accumulation. While results vary by individual, the number of ideas you put out will definitely become an asset.

If you're going to do it today

First, write down three things your past self from a year ago would have wanted to know.

Next, choose the one from that list that you feel most capable of writing about today.

Finally, start writing it as if it were for "the me from a year ago." You don't need to worry about writing it well. The only audience is your past self.

If you get stuck on what to write, don't go looking for ideas elsewhere. The answer is always held by the you from a little while ago.