A few months ago, after giving a speech at a temple, I was approached by a friend of mine who wanted some advice on public speaking. At the time, I could not quite articulate (ironic) how I go about coming up with what to say, and how I decide which words correspond most precisely to the ideas held in my cranium. After thinking about it for longer than I’d like to admit, I realized that most “gurus” talk about how to perform, but not how to think. Which is odd, because speech starts with thought.
For example, many speakers talk about confidence when giving advice on how to speak. There are tons of resources online dedicated to becoming more confident in one’s speaking; although, I will say, most of these “factoids” just come down to knowing what the hell you are saying. Most confidence issues are actually content issues. If your brain is unsure what’s next, your mouth will be too. Please note that this does not mean you should memorize everything. Instead, you should understand your structure deeply enough that you can improvise within it.
Besides, becoming more confident is more of a mechanical task than a creative one. It is more of a series of exercises than a task in thinking intelligently. Very rarely do people talk about the actual process of sculpting language from ideas, let alone knowing which ideas are worth thinking about or saying aloud. So, I will focus on this more “creative” task.
To begin, it is important that I distinguish the difference between an essay and a speech. The word essay comes from the French essayer which means “to try” or “to attempt”. That, in turn, comes from the Latin exagium which mean “a weighing,” as in weighing ideas or possibilities. Contrary to what you have been taught in school, the essay is more of a short, personal, thoughtful exploration (such as this one) of what is rattling in one’s brain. Generally, when you write an essay—a real one—you do not know what your thesis is when you start. Michel De Montaigne basically invented the essay as we know it; he called them essais because they were trials. He was not arguing a side, but rather attempting to think through something in public.
A speech, on the other hand, has a more clear arc. It is more similar to the essays you have to write in school. It has a central argument, with supporting points, and a sense of progression.
When we think of Montaigne’s style, we think of meandering (with purpose). It loops and wanders, but you trust there is a current under the surface pulling you toward inevitable clarity. They meander because they trust that you’ll stay with him while he loops around, contradicts himself, and returns to an earlier point. This works for essays, because the reader can skim it, reread, drift, return, and pause. But with a speech, your listeners do not have that luxury. Time only moves forward. Generally, that kind of structure works if and only if the voice is magnetic and the content earns your attention sentence by sentence. But, generally, you really don’t wanna give a Montaigne-style speech unless your audience is either in a philosophy seminar, very patient, or already obsessed with you.
Anyways, part of what people misunderstand about writing and speaking and thinking is that they think you start with an idea and then express it. But for most people who are actually good at any of this, it’s the opposite. You get the idea by trying to express it. I didn’t have any of these thoughts until I wrote them down. Like, not even vaguely. And even now, some of them feel slightly off but they’re getting more precise as I keep going, which is sort of the point. If I had tried to sit down and “have an idea” first, I’d be sitting there for an hour refreshing my brain like a Reddit tab. I had to do this to know this. It didn’t preexist the writing.
Even now, as I’m typing this exact sentence, I still don’t totally know what I’m trying to say. I’m figuring it out as I go. And what helped, weirdly, was not “sitting down to think” but reading tangentially related things until something in my head clicked into place and I went ohh. Like I needed someone else’s sentence. Half the time it’s not even directly connected. I’ll read a random footnote in a book about linguistics or a Substack post about ADHD or a transcript of a talk and my brain will just latch onto it and twist it into something new. So part of this is honestly just… input. You can’t output anything if there’s nothing rattling around in there to begin with. Reading is fuel, even if what you read is unrelated.
So, once you accept that you have to write/talk your way into insight, the next question becomes: what do you talk about? How do you know what to poke at?
Honestly? Trial and error. You just say stuff. Into a voice memo. Into a notes app. Into a doc. Whatever. You start talking. Rambling. Saying what you’re kind of thinking but don’t fully get yet. And if something makes your stomach drop a little when you say it – like oof, that hit – that’s probably the thing. That’s the one to chase. That’s how you know. The body responds before the mind does. You’re not gonna find the gold by “choosing” a topic. You’re gonna find it by talking until something clicks.
And voice memos are a cheat code for this, since they’re so fast. They let you bypass the part of your brain that gets all perfectionist and worried about wording. You’re not worrying about “writing,” you’re just dumping. Sometimes I’ll go on a walk and record like 10 minutes of nonsense and one line will just do something. That one line becomes the core of a whole essay or talk. Like okay, that’s the sentence the rest of this revolves around. I didn’t “think” it, I caught it. Like a fish.
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