Week 2 — ‘Writing Every Day’ Habit Reflection
After a week of test driving adjustments to my writing habit (and catching Pokemon), I’ve learned a couple new things about the exercise.
I’m just not quite sure what I should change to the habit but I’ll proceed to brain dump and hopefully parse something together by the end of this post.
Three Caveats from Last Week
At the conclusion of the first week of writing I gave myself three main points for improving the second week:
- Working on multiple pieces is allowed as long as 1 piece is shared each week.
- Pragmatism over preaching: provide value to readers with actionable steps that are easy to understand.
- Reference and research to strengthen arguments and combat information overload.
I’ll be honest, the second week of writing felt like a burden.
Every time I wrote during the first week there was an underlying purpose perhaps even a path to release centered around one thought that I would break down with words.
It wasn’t as if I wasn’t writing with purpose during the second week. The express goal was to concoct an article that was informative and pragmatic. But it ended up feeling like I was writing a paper for college but with no rubric or structure to follow.
Extended Timeline = Analysis Paralysis
When given 7 days to work on at least one piece of writing, you tend to jump in strong then dick around during the middle and then hustle hard at the end.
The enthusiasm in the beginning was super high. On Day 1 I researched for an hour while writing an outline and making notes of personal experiences. At the end of Day 2 I had completed the first draft.
Days 3 to 7 were the dicking around phase, also the most excruciating. I found myself writing and rewriting sentences over and over, with each repetition came edits that were conjured out of thin air with questionable necessity.
Though I think if it weren’t for some of the analysis the points wouldn’t have had more meat to them. But there were plenty of moments where I questioned the fluffiness of the additions.
I also got feedback from Steven and Isobel at this phase and incorporated their adjustments on the last day in sort of a frantic revelation sort of way. You never see the same issues as another pair of eyes will no matter how many times you re-read.
Did I Lose My Voice?
There were points in the writing process where fatigue got the best of me. Those parts of the article dragged on both in the writing but also in the reading. I felt as though the lack of enthusiasm zapped my voice out and suddenly I was transported back to miserable paper writing in college.
I think when using research to back my argument, my voice was clouded by the technicalities, defining terms, and explaining concepts. There needs to be a balance of the pragmatism of hard facts and the preaching of good storytelling, two ingredients that need to be finely woven for an enjoyable read.
I had to do a few drafts and iterations to go from (1) sounding like me to (2) sounding too robotic with technical facts then to (3) reducing the roboticness, and then finally (4) adding my voice back in.
Was Length An Issue?
This article was approximately 2100 words with a Medium read estimate of 10 minutes in comparison to last week’s pieces that ranged from 2 to 4 minutes read time so approximately 4–5 times smaller.
I can’t say that this was any better than the shorter ones either. Writers like Seth Godin write multiple blog posts each day that can range from 3 sentences to 1,000 words.
When I wrote this week’s article I almost felt as though I were forcing myself to reach an undefined point of conclusion by using the 3 different reasons as a backbone. I think writing until I’m done is better than trying to force it.
Most Important Changes
- I don’t want to lose my voice in my writing.
- I need to balance facts and storytelling.
- Write until it feels right.
