Three Thoughts on Writing (Reflection on May 2021)
Hey patrons,
First off, thanks to the lovely people that took some time to hang out on Saturday. I had a lot of fun getting to know you, and it was great learning more about what you’ve pondering these days =).
In today’s brief reflection, I want to share three thoughts I have on writing. If you’re a writer, perhaps you’ll find this useful, and if not, maybe you’ll find something in here that could apply to another area of your life.
All right! Let’s jump into it.
(1) Writing is hard. To make it easier, just start with a small idea.
A ton of people enjoy reading. Very few enjoy writing.
I think there’s a simple reason for this: When you read, you start with pages full of stuff. When you write, you start with nothing. A blank page is an intimidating thing to face, especially if you’re not sure where you want to begin.
My wife is an arts educator, and this is one of the problems she tried to remedy in class. She noticed just how scary a blank page could be for her students (especially for those who didn’t consider themselves to be “creative”). They could have all the colored pencils and crayons in the world, but the emptiness of the canvas in front of them would stifle them from the beginning.
The solution she came up with was quite awesome.
As a warm-up exercise for each class, she would hand out a paper with a pre-drawn scribble. Sometimes it was a few lines, other times it was a shape, or even a funny little figure. It was small, but that was the point. By putting a small scribble somewhere on the canvas, she provided an identifiable place to start, and each kid no longer faced an empty page. They would use that scribble to begin their drawings, which quickly grew into a vibrant piece by the end of the exercise.
Sometimes all you need is a place to start.
When I’m not quite sure what I want to write about, sometimes I’ll just jot down an idea and see where it takes me. It doesn’t have to be fully outlined or thought out. It can be even be one quote I heard or read from somewhere that I liked. Regardless of what it is, that idea is a starting point, and it gives me a platform to jump off of.
Writing is the process of knowing what you really think about something. You’d be surprised at the depths you explore while combing through just one idea.
(2) Distraction-free environments are huge.
I once posted a screenshot of my drafts on Twitter, and one of the replies was, “Wow, you do everything in txt?”
Well, kinda.
The actual program I use is Cold Turkey Writer, which effectively turns your computer into a typewriter for a specified period of time (or word count). This means that you can’t hop onto social media during a writing session, check your email, etc. All you can do is write, and it ensures that it stays that way for a while.
After the session is over, it exports your draft to a txt file and saves it to whatever folder you were working in. It’s super simple, and most importantly, super boring.
Writing is a cognitively demanding task, which means that anything that looks remotely fun will draw your attention away. If your phone is nearby as you write, it’ll be way too tempting to grab it the moment you feel a bit stuck. The same sentiment applies to your desktop too, which is why I use Cold Turkey Writer to prevent that fragmentation of attention.
Writing is immensely rewarding, but like anything worthwhile, it demands a lot from you. In my first thought, I described how starting is half the battle. Well, the other half is to sustain the momentum of that start, and that is best achieved by setting up an environment that cultivates focus.
(3) Find your voice through many, many iterations.
More To That is not the first time I published my writing online. I actually did so through a personal account on Medium, and you can find the first post I published here. It’s on the topic of science and religion, and I recall it took a while for me to put it together.
Revisiting it now, it certainly reads like it’s the first thing I ever published. I’m not saying that it’s a good or bad thing; it’s just interesting that I could get that feeling reading it now. It’s like seeing a photo of yourself from junior high school and thinking, “Wow, how in the world is that me? What am I wearing?”
This is the intellectual version of that.
The thing about writing is that each piece you create leads to a small refinement of your style. It’s unnoticeable in the moment, but if you do it enough times, it’ll become clear over a long span of time just how much you’ve grown into the voice you embody now.
When it comes to improving your writing, you can read books, listen to podcasts, or watch videos on the subject, but nothing is as powerful as simply doing it over and over again. Remember that each piece is one brick you’re laying down on the foundation of your style. While each one feels important in the moment, you’ll see after a while that it’s just another brick you laid down long ago. It’s a reminder to let the pressure off yourself for any individual piece, and to focus on the more important thing:
Ensure that you keep going.
That’s it for the reflection today. As always, feel free to share any feedback or any thoughts of your own. Thanks so much for the support!
-Lawrence
