Two weeks ago, I wrote about the how & why behind starting to write every day (with the exception of yesterday). I've tried this for this "sprint" of project work, and wanted to explore some lessons learned throughout. Side note: yes, I'm agile in my personal life...
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So what stood out as I wrote?
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So what stood out as I wrote?
- As I went through my day, I was seeing and thinking about things in a different way. Every new thought was appended with a secondary thought "could I write about this?" and an excitement about that prospect. This reminded me of when I first started taking photos, and composition stuck out in day-to-day life. Or when I started improv, and it only slightly ruined all other comedy, forever.
- While writing, I noticed a recurring thought of "is this worth publishing", and this anxiety is one that I want to accept but not listen to in all but the most crucial situations. This experiment has been great exposure therapy for that!
- Ideas and words flow at different times of the day and different locations suit me best for different things. For example, I generate ideas, make connections, research, and analyze best in the morning and midday; I can do this anywhere, and I found that the gym was a fantastic place for thinking between exercises. But I then need to head home, preferably at night, to turn those notes into conclusions and long-form writing.
- As I dove into some more complex ideas, I noticed that I was hesitating to publish until I had researched them very deeply to come up with robust conclusions. Coming up with a plausible scenario that fit the facts was easy, but the bar is much higher. While I did still publish these early explorations as part of the experiment, moving forward I want to keep my bar for research higher and will prioritizing research depth over speed of publication.
- While I covered many topics and styles, I didn't notice any types that stood out in particular as my favourites (Zettelkasten method in seeing what emerges). I'm going to keep writing and see if any pattern emerges that I can learn from.
Finally, I (mostly) loved this writing experiment! The thinking and the writing clicked really well, and have felt natural to dive into. I've looked forward to it, and enjoyed much of the process. I'll be doing more of this moving forward, and probably will do a daily writing habit again in the coming months. But for now, I have plenty to write and work on for one of my projects, so will prioritize that. More to come soon!
Questions: Did you enjoy (or dislike) any posts in particular? Any feedback for me? Requests for more of a certain thing? Did my thoughts open up new ideas for you, or change your mind on anything?
With thanks to: the many writers and creators I'm enjoying rubbing shoulders with; Eddie and Benny for sitting down at my table at London Beer Lab 6.5 years ago and kicking off wonderful friendships from there
Written from: London Beer Lab in Brixton
While listening to:
