Why Does Overthinking Kill Good Writing?
You can still produce words, but they don’t carry anything worth reading twice.Share on X
The worst thing I can do when starting a new writing project is put too much pressure on myself to generate the perfect idea.
Overthinking drains the life out of a draft, and I’ve come to distrust any idea I had to force. This applies especially to fiction, but the principle holds across everything I write. For more, see writing good dialogue and point of view in fiction.
For the better part of four decades, I wanted to be a writer. But the demands of life got in the way. I spent 33 years in the corporate world, holding high-pressure jobs in the computer industry. I produced technical articles, books, manuals, and guides.
Overthinking drains the life out of a draft, and I’ve come to distrust any idea I had to force.
They were competent. None of them reflected what I thought or felt. The corporate environment rewarded precision and structure and had no use for voice and vulnerability.
The stress of that life created a barrier between me and the creative work I wanted to do. When deadlines, budgets, and organizational politics consume your mind, the deeper part of your imagination goes quiet. You can still produce words, but they don’t carry anything worth reading twice.
What does it mean to write from the heart?
| Aspect | From the head | From the heart |
|---|---|---|
| What it produces | Work that is logical, structured and safe | Work that carries emotional truth, surprise and honesty |
| Characters | Arrangements of traits on a page | People with real feelings and contradictions |
| Where ideas come from | Forced, ground out at the desk | Arrive on a walk, in a garden or behind a camera |
| Best suited to | Technical writing and structured arguments | Fiction and stories that go places you did not plan |
| In a ghostwriting interview | A polished framework and a tidy outline | The truth about what the client has experienced |
| The result | A tidy book nobody remembers a page of | A messy draft with one true scene in it |
The turning point came when I stopped relying on my brain for ideas and started writing from emotional truth. My fiction changed. Characters that had been arrangements of traits on a page became people with real feelings and contradictions. Stories that had been competent came alive.
Our brains have limitations shaped by education, professional training, and social conditioning. These frameworks are useful for technical writing and structured arguments. They’re terrible for fiction, because they confine your thinking to what is logical, expected and safe, and I’ve never loved a novel that was any of those things.
The heart doesn’t operate within those constraints. Writing from the heart means allowing yourself to explore ideas that feel true even when they’re not logical, characters who behave in ways that are messy but honest, and stories that go places you didn’t plan. The best scenes I’ve ever written surprised me while I was writing them.
How do you create the conditions for good ideas?
You can’t force good ideas through deliberate thinking and relentless brainstorming. Ideas emerge when you create the conditions for them and then get out of the way.
For me, relaxation and immersion in activities that have nothing to do with writing open the door.
Walking, exploring a garden, photography, pursuing a hobby. These give the conscious mind something to do while the subconscious works on the problem. The ideas that arrive during a walk are almost always better than the ideas I grind out at my desk.
Stress kills this process. When your mind is burdened with anxiety, you can’t access the deeper parts of your imagination. Stress creates a fog that makes everything feel urgent and nothing feel creative. Often the first step toward better writing has nothing to do with technique. Cut the noise in your life until you can hear your own ideas again.
My take
Stop outlining your way into a dead draft. After 113+ books, I trust the ideas that show up on a walk far more than the ones I grind out at the desk. Too much thinking strangles the work before it starts. Cut the stress and noise in your life first. Then go do something that has nothing to do with writing, and let your subconscious hand you the book.
How does writing from the heart apply to ghostwriting?
This is why my ghostwriting process starts with interviews. When I sit down with a client, I’m not asking them to deliver a structured argument. I’m asking them to talk about what matters to them, what they’ve experienced, what they believe. The best material comes out when clients stop trying to sound impressive and start telling the truth about their experience.
I think a lot of the advice aimed at first-time authors does real damage here. It tells them to arrive with a polished framework and a tidy outline, and they show up guarding the very thing a ghostwriter needs: what they think when nobody’s grading them.
The same principle applies to the fiction writers I coach. The ones who produce the best work are the ones willing to follow a character into uncomfortable territory and write what they find there. Detailed outlines have little to do with it. Technique and craft both matter, and I teach both, but if the writing doesn’t come from something real, the reader feels the difference.
My advice is simple. Find a quiet space. Let your mind wander. When ideas come, write them down but don’t immediately try to build the full story. Let them sit. Come back later and see which ones still have energy. Those are the ones worth pursuing.
I’ll take a messy draft with one true scene in it over a tidy one assembled from an outline every time. The tidy book gets finished and published, and then nobody remembers a page of it, and I think that’s a worse fate for a writer than never finishing at all.
For structured approaches to breaking through creative blocks and finding your best material, see the Brainstorming Guide for Writers and the Writer’s Block Handbook.
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