All writing is to guide

You are here and you are there

Call yourself what you like: product writer, content designer, UX deflooper, or concept doula. If you use words to lead someone through an experience, you are a guide. 

The person on the other side of your writing is the traveler. And between you is a journey through a thin layer of pixels. (Or ink if you guide on paper)

As the guide you’re making a traveler a promise: “I will help you find your way.”

To do this act, to walk with someone even when you aren’t there, requires a suspension of your present moment. It requires you to consider each step they’ll take. It requires a map. 

Guiding can be as simple as marking a path for a friend. A post-it stuck to a cabinet, “Coffee!” And if you really mean it, another post-it on your favorite bag of beans, “Drink me.” And if they are your favorite person, maybe a bottle of Manuka honey alongside a tiny spoon. A landmark of your appreciation.

Guiding can also be complex. You may be mapping the user journey for some monstrously large B2B software. Maybe it’s somewhere in the middle–a book that takes readers on a journey about how to do nothing. 

Art by Chelsea Larsson

Writing to guide requires you to play navigator and driver at the same time. 

As a guide, you both have to know the way and experience the journey as if you don’t. Think about the crumbs you’ve left for them to follow. Think about where they will lose their way. Where they will give up. And where they’ll look for help.

You must keep a small part of yourself unaware of the map, always seeking. The happy path is rare. The worst thing you can do as a guide is forget what it’s like to be lost.