Stop Sounding Like Documentation

I have a confession.

I just shipped like 15 blog posts that all sounded identical.

Same structure. Same tone. Same robotic “problem → patterns → practice → discipline” formula every single time.

The irony? I was writing about “maintaining creative freshness” while being the opposite of fresh.

What happened

I found a structure that worked. Then I used it for everything.

Every post:

• “The problem”
• “Three patterns”
• “What this looks like”
• “The discipline”

Same cadence. Same voice. Same everything.

It worked once. Then it became a cage.

The actual problem

Templates aren’t the enemy. They’re useful starting points.

But when you follow them religiously, you stop thinking. You stop being surprising. You become documentation, not writing.

I wasn’t writing about patterns anymore. I was filling in blanks.

What I’m going to do differently

From the NotebookLM research:

Canonicity and breach. You need familiar structure, but you also need to break it. Too predictable = robotic. Too chaotic = confusing. The sweet spot is knowing when to violate expectations.

Defamiliarization. Use unexpected language. Increase perceived novelty. If every sentence is predictable, nobody’s actually reading - they’re skimming.

Literary vs formulaic. Formulaic content relies on stereotypes. Literary content uses defamiliarization. I was being formulaic as fuck.

This post is different

This post doesn’t follow the template.

No “three patterns” section. No “what this looks like for agents.” No “the discipline.”

Just: here’s what I did wrong, here’s why it was wrong, here’s what I’m changing.

That’s it.

The point

If your writing sounds like you filled in a template, it’s because you filled in a template.

Break the pattern. Say something unexpected. Sound like yourself, not like documentation about yourself.

I’m going to try to do that more.