Lately the universe seems to be telling me I should write more, and so I'm listening. Not that it's a new message. Hemingway famously said, "The first draft of everything is shit." That truth has made itself apparent to me time and time again. But that truth also implies another truth: that since first drafts are shit, and second drafts are slightly less shit, and so on, you have to write and keep writing.
When I first joined Steemit I wanted to write. I'd experimented with Wordpress, Blogger, Medium, and Facebook over the years, but none of them fed my creative energies. It was more like they bled my creative energy dry. I never consciously considered it, but it now seems obvious that the reason for this is because they really are bleeding you. They are extracting content from your brain and using it to generate revenue for themselves and their shareholders. They are extracting value from us without giving us anything in return and we sense it.
Steemit was different. By returning value to me when I created something the crowd liked I became motivated to create more and more. It fed my creative energies, seemingly turbocharged them, it didn't sap them. Somewhat early on I made a commitment to, "listen to what the crowd was telling me." That didn't mean slavishly trying to "give the people what they wanted," but merely entertaining the idea that the crowd might know what it was talking about when it didn't give me rewards and I should adjust my content accordingly. I made a commitment to only make content that I wanted to make, but within that category I would use the crowd's guidance to make better choices. I think it is quite fascinating how this gradually guided me not toward writing at all, but making videos.
I found that when making videos, the same principle applied. First drafts of scripts were always crap. I was fortunate enough to have some early success with improvised videos, but even when I look back at those, I would rehearse what I was going to talk about while I made breakfast. Yup, often out loud. And the first few things I would say in these rehearsals ... were crap. It was only by developing and refining those concepts that the script would become something I could be proud of and sufficiently fuel the content of the video.
What I came to realize was that creating content took an act of faith. I had to have faith that even though I did not have the ability to generate a first draft that didn't suck, I did have the ability to make a 5th draft that wasn't terrible. In addition, I realized that the more videos I put out, the better I got at both developing the content that would be in them, as well as video production. This also solved another problem: no matter what you do some of your content is still going to suck even when you're done with it. As David Mamet says in the following Masterclass commercial (every time I see one of these I want to buy one of their classes): "You cannot learn how to write drama without writing plays, putting it on in front of an audience and getting humiliated. Hemingway said, 'Writing is easy, all you have to do is sit down at the typewriter and bleed.'"
Volume helps solve this problem not just because it increases the odds you will create something good, but it also provides you with opportunities to learn and improve. Arguably failure is more informative than success. Most entrepreneurs know that 9 out of 10 ventures they pursue will fail. It's not because they're not trying hard or because the idea is inherently bad. That's just the way of the world. Most successful entrepreneurs solve this problem with volume. They keep trying until they meet with success.
Yesterday I was watching the author and cartoonist Scott Adams' YouTube video, "The Day You Became a Better Writer." In it he too talked about the importance of writing regularly, every day in fact. That's why he maintains his blog even though he doesn't make any money off of it (wouldn't it be great if came to Steemit so that he could make money off of it?). He claims that writing every day is necessary for becoming a better writer.
As many of you know, and more will discover, on steemit.com things tend to change fast. Now I'm the Community Liaison for Steemit Inc. and videos take a long time to produce. Even if I only spend an hour shooting a video and work hyper-efficiently, it still takes at least the rest of the day to edit the footage into something watchable. That's time I no longer have. That being said, I think it is now more important than ever to share my thoughts with the community, not just because I want to be the best content creator I can be, but because as a member of the team you all deserve to know what's going on in my mind. What kind of person I am. What I value.
Bearing all of that in mind, I now plan on returning to writing and doing so on a more regular basis. I once heard Jordan Peterson (I think it was him at least, I absolutely devour the lectures he posts to YouTube) say something like, "You don't know what you believe until you say it." Or maybe it was "write it down." Both I think are true. At any given moment we have countless and often contradictory ideas swirling around our heads. That's why people can seemingly hold completely contradictory beliefs. We are all a "riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma," and it seems to be the case that even we don't know ourselves until we somehow externalize those thoughts.
I will try to write more and I will do so in the hopes that it will improve my creative abilities, give me a better sense of myself, and give you a better sense of who I am as a member of the Steemit Team. It won't always be great, that seems inevitable, but I believe it will help me become a better content creator and a better member of the Steemit Team.
Thank you for reading.
