Publishing something everyday for a month

Like a fool I’ve committed myself to publishing something every day for a month. I can’t lie, it’s already been a struggle. I’ve been succumbing to distraction, if anything, more than usual. I’d have given up by now but Kyle and Avvai are both supporting the effort with proof reading, handy tips, accountability, and lots of encouragement — so there’s no escape!

Today is day six and it’s a meta day, writing about the process of writing. Sue me.

The writing so far, having started on the 18th,

18. What makes a good shortcut?
19. Kyle’s inspiring person project
20. How can you afford this? — my favourite so far, very much the vein I want to be writing in
21. Gasper, Prand, and Wilson
22. Little communities on the Kupa
23. Publishing something everyday for a month — this one you’re reading now

Day 30, the end of the commitment, will be December 17th.

Committing to publishing something every day for a month is a forcing function, and it is potent. I am writing more. And feeling where I get bogged down each day, repeatedly, is forcing me to confront those hurdles and imagine better ways over them. Gradually I am discovering what my natural process is.

Here are some of the areas I’m trying to focus on,

• Write a lot, write it now, spend it all, shoot it, don’t wait until you know enough to write it well else you’ll never learn what it takes to write it well.

• Delay the edit as far as possible
  Too often I get bogged down in premature optimisation. I’ve always done this. I even wrote about it… three and half years ago. Precious little has changed.

• Contextualise as little as possible
  Say only what is essential to situate it in a rich story. I frequently lose momentum with writing because of unbounded scope and premature editing. But there is tension with the scoping, because writing is at its most thrilling for me when I can write in a stream of consciousness way and feel its parts expanding to their true proportion. When one part has outgrown the piece of writing it began in, it naturally becomes its own thing, and that spidering-out of thought elicits a kind of bliss for me. Some examples of this indulgently sprawling style,

  • Accountability, authenticity, media, confidence, time-boxing; practices for writing and thinking with Avvai and Kyle
  • An evening’s conversation on personal, conceptual, and creative integrity with Kyle
  • Kyle’s inspiring person project

  I need to find the balance of the two, a rhythm that permits both the cycle of expanding and focusing, but also the tighter stories/vignettes that move me.

  Better to be left wanting than wanting to leave.

• Write for one person
  After really struggling to bring my writing on the 20th to a cohesive point, it was throwing the whole lot out and rewriting it for that German father I met in Slovenia last year that made it all make sense. But even in that, I was really writing for myself. Acknowledging that — leaning into it, deepening that practice — is what I want to be doing.

  The first objective of writing for me is to engage with my way of being — to look at how I live and explore what that says about me; to examine my assumptions about the world, about people, and practice letting go; to gradually synthesise my ways of seeing, thinking, and being into a cohesive, integral philosophy of living.

  It comes down to respecting the audience. People don’t need spoon-feeding, they can come to their own conclusions by drawing inspiration from a diffuse set of influences of which my writing will be — at best — a small part.

  Rather than being dispiriting, this is liberating. If I can consistently write the best version of a thing for me, or for some specific person that I know/love, then through that process I will write things that can be of use to a broader set of people. Specificity is the key.