I Will Write More

I've found the quality of my inputs to be extremely important if I want to sustain any sort of writing habit. It's hard for me to write frequently if I'm not reading frequently. It almost has to be books, not necessarily related to the sort of things I write, but it's like the act of reading plants seeds for new thoughts and ideas that eventually grow and form into text.

I’m growing more and more jaded by the notion that a new calendar year should involve some sort of personal reinvention.<p>If you wanted to do that, you’d be doing it already. So quit making promises and just do the thing, or don’t.<p>Just enjoy where you are in life and focus on whats most important now.

I can relate to this post, but it does seem to be a little idealistic. The plan is: consistently set aside time, write any ideas that seem fun, then see if it&#x27;s valuable and does not exist (and don&#x27;t release it otherwise). So, basically it&#x27;s &quot;write for the sake of writing.&quot; As someone who has written many long high effort blog posts (1000s of words long), the amount of work a solid post usually takes for me is too great for this write-and-see-what-happens plan; I simply would not want to put things out there that are redundant or uninteresting. But that&#x27;s just me - maybe this&#x27;ll work for the author of this post.

Just for once, I&#x27;d like to see some prominent (or even not so prominent) person embark on a New Year&#x27;s resolution to write <i>less</i>.

I like to write. Now that I am retired I usually work on a book project about two hours a day.<p>I started a private journal six months ago and tried to write every day. Then I stopped two months ago. I journaled today because it is the last day of the year, and felt much better after a five minute personal brain dump. It is very different writing for oneself! I hope that I do personal journaling more consistently next year because the process is very centering. As individuals we have a lot of stuff that other people either shouldn’t hear or wouldn’t want to hear. Personal journaling into &#x2F;dev&#x2F;null seems appropriate.

I will read less text from LCDs and more from dead trees.

&gt; However, my brain feels like it’s become very intake-optimized at the expense of creativity.<p>Bingo.

I find the volume of ideas I have far outstrips my time to write meaningfully about most of them, so now I have a Backlog page on my website where I can just post a single paragraph and leave the idea floating there. That way I have a record of it, and someone else can pick it up if they have time and interest, and I don&#x27;t feel like I have to write a comprehensive treatment for every idea.

My favorite part of this post is the distinction between writing and posting. Picking an audience is important for me when I write. If a post is mostly self reflection for yourself, it’s ok to not post it.

I can recommend to Op reading the book “If you want to write.” by Brenda Ueland.

The questions that one asks themselves before writing a blog post such as whether it&#x27;s valuable, exists, whether we have time is what leads to the downfall of 99% of blog posts.