Not five minutes ago I was watching the Snap story of a friend of mine’s. Awkwardly enough, he was talking about me in his story.

We grabbed coffee yesterday, and somewhere in the middle of it I made the comment, “Yeah, I’ve noticed you’ve been on Snapchat a lot more recently, but I didn’t watch much of it.”

See, Will’s who I call King of the 365 (year-long project), and he’s just starting another one where he’s going to vlog everyday – but with quality video editing, because he’s a rather talented creative – and he’s practicing on Snapchat.

I made this passing comment to Will, and he turned that comment into a several-minute-long piece of video content for his Snapchat followers. And now I’m taking his mentioning of me in that piece of content, and turning it into another piece of content.

Everything can be turned into a piece of content.

For those of you lucky enough to escape the world of digital marketing buzzwords, “content” simply refers to some article, infographic, image, video, or anything that can be shared across social media platforms.

As a writer, which you probably are in some capacity if you’re reading this (or just a really good follower, which means I owe you a Christmas present), you’re always looking for more things to write about so that you can hone your craft and ultimately make a few (million?) bucks off of your work.

So here’s how you can turn everything – like a passing comment made by a friend, or an intro to someone else’s video content – into your own writing prompt.

Dun dun duuhh…

Type out what you’re thinking.

I know! That’s super challenging and you never would have thought of that on your own. If you want help writing, becoming a better writer, or simply producing more content in general, you have to start creating.

I love using Gary Vaynerchuck (aka GaryVee) as a reference. He’s worth hundreds of millions, he’s a great businessman, and he keeps everything very simple. If you listen to Gary speak, live or in his videos, you’ll notice he’s not the world’s greatest orator – and he wouldn’t claim to be. But he’s very candid. He shares what he thinks about everything with the world, and it’s clearly made him very profitable in multiple areas.

Everyone who wants to become better as something wants to produce more, higher quality material. The only way to do that is to start creating more, and as you continue to create, what you’re creating will gradually get better. If you’re creating in a public way while you’re growing, like through a blog or YouTube channel, you’ll also gain a following in the process – maybe even a revenue-producing following.

Every time someone speaks to you, you have thoughts. Every time you get in the shower, you have thoughts – probably some of your best! Whenever you’re driving and hear someone speak on the radio, or see a news headline, or watch a video – you have this whole world of constantly streaming thoughts that, if you’re like most people, you keep to yourself. Share them!

To turn everything into a writing prompt, write out your thoughts every time you have a chance. Maybe you’ll only be able to write a paragraph or a couple hundreds words the first few times. That’s a great start! Eventually that paragraph will turn into pages, and before you know it you’ll be writing chapters and full books – books that people will actually want to read!

What you want to do with this is all up to you. You could use this concept to start writing/blogging as much as possible (which I’d support). You could use this to start your own YouTube channel, or to start producing more wherever you’re already releasing content.

What I really want you to take away from this is that every moment, every time someone speaks, everything is an opportunity to both create and to further your own abilities.

Take advantage! Everything can be a prompt.