By Jane Sonnenschein · December 21, 2025

Many people think writing is something that needs to be “planned.”

Every day, you are supposed to ask yourself:

What should I write about today?

Will anyone want to read this topic?

How are other people writing about it?

Is there a viral post I can learn from?

So you start chasing trends, looking for topics, breaking down structures, and studying formulas.

For many people, these four things become almost a standard part of writing.

What comes out may look like “an article.”

But I know that is not the kind of writing I want.

Worse still, writing this way creates a constant kind of anxiety:

If I finish today’s piece, what about tomorrow?

If I cannot find a good topic, does that mean I have nothing to write?

Writing becomes something that requires an endless search for material.

And material begins to feel finite.

For a long time, that was one reason I hesitated to begin.

It was not because I did not want to write.

It was because, somewhere inside, I already knew that this was not a way of writing I wanted to live with for the long term.

Only later did I realize that this feeling of anticipating failure before I had even begun was not because I lacked effort.

It was because—

I had put writing in the wrong place.

I Used to Think Only Sadness Could Make Me Write

I had never really examined this before.

I only knew one thing:

When sadness came over me like a tide, I could write a lot, and I could write very quickly.

My hand kept moving. My mind barely seemed involved.

Page after page came out—

eighteen pages, nineteen pages—

as if the words had already been there all along, waiting for me to copy them down.

But as soon as my emotions became calm, or even when I felt merely suppressed rather than deeply sad, I could not write at all.

I used to think sadness simply had more power.

Now I understand that it was not sadness itself that made me able to write.

Sadness opened the channel.

When I was sad, I stopped controlling myself.

I stopped judging whether a sentence was good enough.

I stopped wondering whether anyone would want to read what I was writing.

I simply wrote.

But when I was being rational, restrained, and demanding of myself, that channel was closed.

Of course the writing stopped flowing.

Writing Is Not Production. It Is Connection.

The real change happened when I stopped forcing myself to “think of a topic.”

I discovered something important:

When I stopped treating writing as a task and began treating it as one of the ways I relate to the world, the anxiety disappeared.

Not because I became more disciplined.

But because I was no longer “hungry.”

When you are genuinely exchanging energy with the world—talking, understanding, feeling, making connections—writing does not run dry.

Because the world is not a storehouse of material.

It is a field of relationships that is constantly unfolding.

For example, today I walked past the building downstairs and saw a leaf stuck to a wet pane of glass.

At that moment, I knew I could write.

A fallen leaf, a conversation, a thought, a moment of silence—

the question is not whether any of these things are “worth writing about.”

The question is whether you have truly connected with them.

Once that connection happens, words are simply the natural by-product.

Meaning Comes From the Relationship, Not the Event

Later, I realized that there is a quiet dividing line in writing.

Some people write:

“What happened.”

Some write:

“What did this mean to me?”

And fewer still write:

“What happened between me and this experience?”

The difference is not in writing skill.

It is in the relationship.

Sweeping fallen leaves is not only about sweeping fallen leaves.

It can become time, repetition, care, disappearance.

It can become the way a person practices living, and the endless movement from order to disorder and back toward order again.

Tidying a wardrobe is not only about tidying a wardrobe either.

It can also be about clearing the dust from your mind and then moving forward more lightly.

But this kind of writing is not a technique.

It is a level of perception.

It is not something you simply “learn.”

It happens when a person reaches a certain stage in life and becomes willing to slow down, willing to stay with something for a while, willing to let associations unfold naturally.

Writing Has Begun to Nourish Me

Only recently did I fully realize something:

For me, writing is not output.

It gives energy back to me.

When I am immersed in writing and thinking, numbers begin to matter less.

Other people’s judgments automatically move further into the background.

It is not that I no longer care about the world.

It is that I have finally found a steadier place to stand.

The feeling is very quiet, but also very certain—

like light resting on the surface of water.

Nothing loud.

Just calm.

Writing Should Not Leave You Depleted

If writing makes you more and more tense, more and more anxious, and increasingly afraid of the question, “What am I going to write tomorrow?” then perhaps the problem is not you.

Perhaps it is the way you are using writing.

Writing does not have to come from discipline.

It can also come from flow.

When the channel is open, the world is endless.

You do not need to search for a new topic every day.

Because you are already living inside life.

For You, Here and Now

If you have read this far and realized that writing has made you anxious too—

anxious that you will run out of topics,

anxious that you are not disciplined enough,

anxious that being unable to write means you are not good enough—

then there is something I want to say quietly:

Maybe the problem is not you.

Maybe you were simply taught a way of writing that does not suit you.

Writing does not have to be about planning, producing, and pushing yourself to keep going.

It can also be about connection, response, and flow.

It does not have to mean forcing yourself to leave something behind every single day.

It can mean living your life slowly enough to hear what is already moving toward you.

If you are in a stage of life where you need to slow down and begin feeling yourself again, perhaps you do not need to worry yet about whether what you write “looks like a good article.”

Ask yourself something else first:

Am I truly in contact with the world right now?

When the channel opens again, the words will find you.

I have written many times about falling apart.

And many times about finding my way back to myself.

Now I would rather move a little more slowly.

You do not need to move quickly.

You do not need to be ahead.

As long as you keep moving, step by step, in the direction where something inside you is beginning to open and unfold,

that is already enough.

This essay is also available in other languages:

Chinese version: 当写作不再需要找话题

German version: Wenn man beim Schreiben nicht mehr nach Themen suchen muss