It’s never wrong to write.
But you don’t have to publish every thought in your head.
I write a lot, but I publish very little. And I think that’s fine. In fact, I want to encourage that more.
“Anybody can have ideas — the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.”
— Mark Twain
Writing well is a skill. And like many skills, it takes practice; you only get better at writing by writing. But not all of your sentence construction is ready for ribbon cutting. Some of the ideas that started on scraps of paper in your pocket deserve to stay there. Maybe until the ideas are more fully thought out. Maybe until they have better context. Maybe forever.
One of the greatest gifts my friend Scott ever gave me was his time. Specifically, time to read what I wrote. Time to talk about my ideas. Time to make them better. I miss that terribly. I miss having a great editor who could challenge my assumptions as well as my alliterations. I miss a lot of things about him. And I find that I’m writing about that longing a lot. But I’m not publishing it all. It’s too much. It’s too personal. But the thoughts keep me writing, and I think he’d like that.
“The trick is not becoming a writer, it’s staying a writer.”
— Harlan Ellison
Now, I don’t want you to think that you shouldn’t ever publish what you write. Far from it. But I do want you to be more selective about how much of it you post. Think of your posts as album releases and you’re mid-90s Guns ’n’ Roses rather than mid-90s Guided By Voices. Well, no — not Guns ’n’ Roses, because I don’t what to be thoroughly disappointed in you when you finally put something out. But I think you get my point. Be a little more selective about what you put out there. We don’t need to hear every thought in your head, Bob.
As a bit of a guide, here are a few questions I ask myself before I push “Publish”:
Who is the audience for these thoughts?
The answer to this for me is usually my parents. I’m pretty sure they’re the only ones on this planet who have read every thought I’ve posted into the ether. So, I try to make sure every sentence, every word, and every letter has purpose — because they could be enjoying their retirement by the beach instead of reading my Tweets.
Has somebody else read this yet?
Find someone you trust. Ask them to read what you wrote. They don’t have to be in your target audience or part of a writers’ group or well-versed in when to use “which” versus “that”. They just need to be human. And brutally honest. You don’t even have to implement any of their suggestions. But you will need to be able to justify the linguistic choices you’ve made.
Will reading this make anyone’s life better?
Writing probably made your life better. That’s why you carved out the time to scratch out the idea in the first place, right? But once you’ve exorcised your digital demons, it’s paramount that these wordy worry dolls are worthy of public consumption. If you’re writing just to keep in practice, I admire and encourage that. I just might not want to read all of it. Unless, of course, I’m the person you’re trusting with your most vulnerable thoughts before they’re thrust upon the world. It takes a bit of bravery to open yourself up to criticism, but without it, you don’t know what you don’t know about being better at something.
What should readers do next?
The pieces I end up making public usually have some sort of request. The business I’ve been in for more years than I care to count labels these as a CTA, “call-to-action.” If, at the end of something I’ve written, I don’t have a next step for you, I probably won’t share it. If the next step is for me, I definitely won’t, because I don’t need you putting that pressure on me. “Hey, did you make that [possibly great idea, if I’d just find the time for it] you told me about at work?” “Did you ever finish that [creative outlet, probably a song or something musical] you mentioned on Twitter?” “Where’s the [fully formed idea in my head that got scribbled into a notebook and now I can’t read my own writing and what the hell does this even say]? I want what I write to be the starting point of a journey for you. If it’s not, I probably should have kept it to myself.
Will this be measured?
Sure, Likes, Favorites, Recommendations, and the rest are pleasant pats on the back. But when I really want you to do something, I want a metric to know how effective my arguments were in persuading you to take that action. Did you learn something new? Can you add to the discussion? Have you donated to the cause? I want to know. Without that, I might as well just be shouting these thoughts out my window to the handful of drunks gathered in a small circle smoking cigarettes outside the bar across the street.
“You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.”
— Red Smith
I write because I have to. I assume some of you do, too. Telling you not to publish everything you create is — to undercut my entire argument up to now — hyperbole. It’s mainly a way for me to goad you into an argument about how easy it is to get words in front of faces and how precious our time is and how our current information diet is causing us to develop digital diabetes. We are consuming lots, but are we really nourishing ourselves? I want comments. I want complaints. I want critique. We need to talk about priorities and quality and attention. But we should also be mindful that we have moved toward an inclination to post just for the instant gratification of a Like. Or a Fav. Or a Recommend. We need to stop wasting our lives hitting refresh. In this world where it’s so easy for anyone to publish a thought, is there any value to all of us thinking out loud? Even as I type this now, I’m having my own misgivings about whether or not this is worthy of your read. Let me know.
I’ll be refreshing this page until you do.
