I’m not sure why we do this. Maybe we over-compensate in our desire to stay humble. In the process, we undermine the value of the gift we bring to the world naturally.

What comes naturally to you as a writer? Is it storytelling? Outlining a book? Editing? Proofreading? Making clients feel comfortable? Writing a draft quickly? Systems for book production?

Let me share some of the natural skills of a few friends in the Daily Writer Club.

Lucas Marino is a course creator who has a natural skill for taking your book content and turning it into a course.

Karen Hunsanger is an editor who has a natural skill for rooting out errors in your manuscript and making you look better.

M.J. James is a coach for burned-out business moms. She has a natural skill at listening and helping you see the roadblocks that prevent you from having a more peaceful life.

Andrew Wood is a former college professor who is an incredible researcher. He has a natural gift for knowing how to organize complex material and write it in a way you and I can understand.

Perry Gabbard is a former aerospace engineer who is one of the most natural and gifted storytellers I’ve ever met.

Lori Melton is a coach who has a natural calming presence and a gift for helping others discover their spiritual mentors.

Brigitte Cutshall is a runner and book production specialist who has a natural skill for creating books that look amazing.

These natural skills are not unique to them. You also have a natural gift and special skill that is powerful! That’s what makes you a genius in everybody else’s eyes.

Whatever that skill is, you can combine it with writing to create a powerful business and author platform.

Don’t run from your gift. Don’t hide it. Instead, embrace it, cherish it, and nurture it. God gave it to you for a reason!

Today’s Challenge: Grab a piece of paper and write down your natural gift. You know what it is. Are you using it to its fullest potential? How can you keep developing it and combine it with writing books to serve others or even build a business?

The post It’s Natural for You, But Genius to Someone Else appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

We writers deal with thousands of seeds. Those seeds are ideas. They are scraps of stories, articles, books, speeches, or workshops. Ideas come and go by the dozens every day. It’s hard to tell in the moment which ones are worth keeping, and which we should discard.

That’s why we need to make a habit of planting those seeds—in other words, keeping track of them. Much has been written about different systems to organize your ideas. You can use printed journals, computer apps, a notecard system, or any of a dozen other ways to store and organize ideas.

The system doesn’t matter as much as your consistency in recording those ideas and keeping them somewhere you can retrieve them. A good option is to use a combination of tools—perhaps a small notebook you carry with you, plus apps where you transfer ideas and then search for them later.

If you want a harvest of good writing, you have to plant your ideas in some kind of system where they can take shape. Don’t trust your memory. Many great ideas have been lost because people forgot to write them down.

If you don’t have a good system, ask three writer friends what they use and start implementing a system within the next day.

Question: Do you have a system in place to record and retrieve your ideas?

The post Planting: Keep Track of Your Ideas appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.