The Quiet Quotient

In an age ruled by swipe-speed content, writing has become a race. A race for clicks, for views, for just enough attention before the next distraction hits. Tweets, reels, shorts—content is shrinking, and so, it seems, is our collective patience. Connect with me: jimhansenmedia.com

Most of what I write starts in silence. Not the dramatic kind—no candlelit desk or sweeping soundtrack—just regular silence. The kind that happens when the dishwasher hums, or when you pause mid-scroll and suddenly hear yourself breathing. Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/

The other night, I spent 45 minutes scrolling through Netflix, looking for something to watch. I wasn’t asking for much, just a show that was exciting but not stressful, funny but not silly, smart but not exhausting. Basically, I wanted the perfect thing to match my mood. Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/

In a culture obsessed with doing, Rick Rubin is the guy who doesn’t. In meetings, he's quiet. In sessions, he waits. He creates space, and in that space, artists breathe again. They rediscover what they were trying to say before the industry turned them into a content machine. Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/

Certain characters show up on the page. Others take up space in your head and refuse to leave. They wake you up at 3AM with lines you didn’t write. They interrupt your lunch. They start speaking in scenes you never planned. You didn’t create them. You met them. And now they won’t shut up until you tell their story right. Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/

Plotting Is a Scam

Not storytelling. Not structure. Plotting. The rigid, over-engineered “three-act arc” every writing book tries to sell you. It’s storytelling with a GPS, sounds useful, until it takes you straight into traffic and kills the magic.

Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/

The first draft is a liar.

It tells you you’re a genius, until you read it back and realize you wrote 800 words of incoherent sludge. Or worse, it tells you that your idea is trash, when in reality, it just needs time to grow teeth. Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/

Writers, as a group, tend to be paranoid. Jenna once spent a full afternoon convinced a barista was judging her laptop stickers. (“'Plotter not Pantser, a little desperate, don’t you think?” she imagined the espresso machine sneering.) But the printer wasn’t judging. The printer was plotting.

Writers are strange like that. They build rituals out of absolutely nothing, specific mugs, specific chairs, the exact right kind of silence, which sounds a lot like regular silence except it involves no leaf blowers, no dogs, and definitely no self-doubt whispering in a French accent. Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/

We live in a loud world. Everyone’s talking. Posting. Pitching. Building their brand. Optimizing for engagement. Silence? That’s often mistaken for irrelevance. For losing.

But silence, when intentional, is actually a power move. Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/

The biggest mistake brands, creators, and businesses make? Thinking they have time. You don’t. The content landscape moves at breakneck speed, what worked last month is stale today. If you’re still waiting for the perfect moment to adjust your content strategy, you’re already losing. Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/

Almost overnight, the craft of writing vanished. Poof. One minute you’re sweating over the perfect sentence, the next, some AI cranks out a thousand words while you’re still trying to remember if it’s "affect" or "effect." Tech didn’t  help writers, it replaced them, or tried to. This wasn’t evolution. It was a hostile takeover. Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/

A slow take on punctuation, rhythm, and the music of a good sentence.

The comma is more powerful than you think. Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/

The bots didn’t ask us to churn out SEO Franken-content stitched together with clichés and keyword stuffing. We did that. We turned writing into a factory line of so-so. Now we’re mad that machines are better at being average? Please. Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/

Writing as a profession is tough. It's crowded, underpaid, and increasingly commoditized. The top 1% of writers, those who’ve built platforms, brands, or niche expertise, can do well. But for most? It’s a grind with little financial upside. Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/

Writing is a brutal, thankless grind. It’s also one of the most powerful things you can do. Both are true. You’re not Hunter S. Thompson, I’m not Hunter S. Thompson, and honestly, even Thompson had days where he probably stared at the page thinking, What am I doing? (Granted, he likely solved that with whiskey and cigarettes, but, that’s beside the point.) Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/

Most writing is good. Competent. Articulate. Even polished. The problem is, good writing is everywhere, and that makes it invisible. The internet is drowning in content, the ability to string words together isn’t enough. If you want your writing to break through, it has to do something good writing often doesn’t, feel like a person wrote it. Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/

When I was younger, I used to draw lines in the margins of books. Sometimes literally—highlighting a sentence, scribbling a star, underlining a phrase that sounded like truth. I thought if I marked it, I could return to it later and feel exactly the same. Like pressing a leaf into a book to preserve the moment it fell. Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-hansen-b67412169/