Something that has been at the top of my mind lately are my writing habits. Writing has been a habit of mine that I have consistently come back to over the past several years.
My first start at writing outside of assignments for school was when I was about 14 years old. At this time in my life, I became a fanatic for podcasts and for both physical and audio books.
Naturally, I took a lot of notes from all the various pieces of content that I was consuming. Over time, I found myself extending my notes and writing beyond what was on the page or coming through my headphones.
As time went on, I slowly began to realize that I actually enjoyed writing. Coming from a D- student, this was quite the surprise as I hated writing assignments in school.
It turns out that when I write about things that I actually have some sort of passion and curiosity for, I enjoy the slow grind and the consistent process of it.
To write well means to show up daily and consistently. It means consistently sitting down with nothing but your own thoughts.
Today I was listening to the Joe Rogan podcast episode with Neal Brennan. At about the 2hr mark, they began to talk about writing comedy.
For those who don’t know, stand-up comedy is as much about writing as it is about performing the comedy itself. In fact, from Joe’s description, it’s more so about the writing and less about the performing itself.
The time you take to patiently and consistently write is what prepares you to then go on stage and see if what you’ve written holds up in front of a live audience.
Writing means something different to everyone.
To me, writing is both a release and an adventure. It is an adventure into the depths of my mind and my subconscious. Sometimes I write about a topic and find myself riffing in a way that I never even knew possible.
I somehow dig up certain thoughts that I had no idea even existed in my mind. Simultaneously, I gain a deep clarity into what I actually think about a particular subject.
Re-reading my own writing is sometimes like reading other peoples’ writing. I look back at the page and wonder how I even made those thoughts appear.
I’ve found that the only way for me to write well is to write consistently. I have to show up every day and just force myself to sit down and write.
If I don’t make it a daily habit to sit down and write, then I’ll go weeks without writing anything of great substance.
Some days are better than others but I always tend to get something down on the page each day.
The best days are often when I least expect it. They are the days when I start out staring at a blank page and then all of the sudden fall into some dark rabbit hole of my mind and shine some light on some ideas that were hanging out in there.
My specific process is simple:
I sit down with a cup of green tea or coffee (depending on the time of day). I open Evernote on my laptop and start a new note for the day. Then I just start writing. Sometimes I have a subject already picked out and other times I have nothing to start with.
I also keep a note filled with bulleted ideas and subjects that have piqued my curiosity in the past. If I get really stuck with no substantial subject, then I’ll read through the hundreds of ideas I’ve stored over the years but have never written about in depth.
Since joining Steem, I have noticed that there are a lot of great writers here and I figured it would be interesting to see what kind of process you all have when it comes to pushing out a great blog post.
