I agree. When I started to treat my writing endeavours as a hobby rather than as a path to fame, glory, riches and world domination, I also started to enjoy the writing process a lot more. Nowadays I only write when I want to write, and I only write what I want to write. It's a freedom I've come to cherish.
One of my favorite hobbies is writing. But it's so easy to get stuck into overthinking it, reading about writing, reading how other people write, etc etc etc...
Instead, I've noticed the best feeling comes from staring at a blank page and just letting the mind work things out in real-time. Sometimes it sucks (maybe most of the time), but it seems like there's plenty of times where it also goes really well.
Once I figured out that the key to building my writing habit was to separate the process of writing from the outcome of publishing, I realized I could do this.
Taking writing more seriously and approaching it with more rigor.
Everything and everyone interesting in my life from the past six years can be traced directly back to writing. Jobs I've gotten, deeper relationships with people whose work I love and respect — all tied together by words.
In my life, I can't think of a single thing that has a better return on time in to value out. (Outside of family / children.)
> write. writing clarifies. it forces you to make fuzzy things concrete.
I often find after writing something, I'm taking lots of half-formed thoughts that were keeping my brain occupied and relieving myself of the burden of carrying them around and keeping my thoughts on an issue sorted out. It's kind of liberating and it let's me properly turn my attention to something else and focus properly on it.
Outside of work, to create at least as much as I consume. I'm trying to pick up writing as a hobby to shift my creation:consumption balance.
Edit: Related to that, I've been writing brief notes on interesting articles I read for the past few years. This has two advantages:
1) It helps me to read critically, and
2) It forces me to be more intentional about the articles I read - one way to combat the deluge of information
Thanks for writing this up. I’m on my own writing journey and it’s inspiring to hear that its as chaotic to others and I’m finding it (while also being productive). So cheers to that!
Agree with this. I felt the same about writing, but eventually found that having strong feelings about my chosen topic helps a lot.
I’ve never been able to write for the sake of writing, so I only author posts when I feel strongly about the topic. There are days or weeks when I don’t care to write anything and that’s ok. Eventually you run across something interesting and BAM, you can barely type fast enough to keep up with your thoughts.
I love this feeling! Go write. I've learned over time to harness this even when I find something poorly written, almost as a rebellion and an effort to do it better. :D
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