Developing The Ability To Repeat The Same API Stories Over And Over

After seven years of telling stories on API Evangelist I’ve had to repeat myself from time to time. Honestly, I repeat myself A LOT. Hopefully I do it in a way that some of you don’t notice, or at least you are good at filtering the stories you’ve already heard from your feed timeline. My primary target audience is the waves of new folks to the world of APIs I catch with the SEO net I’m casting and working on a daily basis. Secondarily, it is the API echo chamber, and folks who have been following me for a while. I try to write stories across the spectrum, speaking to the leading edge API conversations, as well as the 101 level, and everything in between.

Ask anyone doing API evangelism, advocacy, training, outreach, and leadership–and they’ll that you have to repeat yourself a lot. It is something you get pretty sick of, and if you don’t find ways to make things interesting, and change things up, you will burn out. To help tell the same story over and over I’m always looking for a slightly different angle. Let’s take API Meetups as an example. Writing a story about conducting an API Meetup has been done. Overdone. To write a new story about it I’ll evaluate what is happening at the Meetup that is different, or maybe the company, or the speaker. Diving into the background of what they are doing looking for interesting things they’ve done. You have to find an angle to wrap the boring in something of value.

API documentation is another topic I cover over, and over, and over. You can only talk about static or interactive API documentation so much. Then you move into the process behind. Maybe a list of other supporting elements like code samples, visualizations, or authentication. How was the onboarding process improved? How the open source solution behind it simplifies the process. You really have to work at this stuff. You have to explore, scratch, dig through your intended topic until you find an angle that you truly care about. Sure, it has to matter to your readers, but if you don’t care about it, the chances of writing an interesting story diminishes.

This process requires you to get to know a topic. Read other people’s writing on the topic. Study it. Spin it around. Dive into other angles like the company or people behind. Spend time learning the history of how we got here with the topic. If you do all this work, there is a greater chance you will be able to find some new angle that will be interesting. Also, when something new happens in any topical area, you have this wealth of knowledge about it, and you might find a new spark here as well. Even after all that, you still might not find what you are looking for. You still end up with many half finished stories in your notebook. It is just the way things go. It’s ok. Not everything you write has to see the light of day. Sometimes it will just be exercise for the next round of inspiration. That hard work you are experiencing to find a good story is what it takes to reach the point where you are able to discover the gems, those stories that people read, retweet, and talk about.