12 Lessons I Learned From Writing 12 Articles In 12 Months

The finale of my #CrystalizeMyLearning writing movement. And yes, I wrote 12 articles in the past 12 months.

Lye Jia Jun

Published in

ILLUMINATION

9 min readDec 25, 2022

At the start of 2022, I founded the #CrystalizeMyLearning writing movement to learn through writing.

Upon founding the movement, I described three tangible goals I hope to achieve.

Think more critically and become more creative
Build a community of avid learners
Share my knowledge with the wider community

Fast forward to today, I have written twelve full articles over twelve months.

The results

Did I become a more creative thinker? Heck yes.
Was I able to find passionate learners who share similar interests? Of course!
Did my community find value in my articles? I hope so!

20,000 words — the approximate total number of words in my past twelve articles

I hope my writing of 12 articles in 12 months totaling around ~20,000 total words written highlights how I probably at least learned a thing or two during this tremendous journey!

Actually, it’s more than a thing or two.

In this article, I reflect on the twelve lessons I’ve learned in this year-long writing journey.

**Serious author note: This article is NOT written by ChatGPT!

Lesson 1 — Finding Sources of Inspiration

Among my twelve articles, I wrote about topics such as education, mental health, technical frameworks, psychology, and even the latest global affairs like the Meta tech layoff.
You may wonder what is the source of my inspiration. The answer: podcasts, books, and articles.
It wasn’t easy writing about such a disparate range of topics, but by reading more books, listening to more podcasts, and keeping up with daily affairs through articles, it became much easier to find interesting topics to write about.

Lesson 2— Discovering & Learning New Technologies

There are clear benefits to consuming content broadly. You’d discover new technologies like I did.
Through writing, I not only found new technologies but also gain a deeper appreciation of the “whys” behind technology as I needed to research intently before writing about a subject. I could understand Natural Langauge Processing more profoundly through a project I built, and deep-dive into the intricacies of the OAuth 2.0 authorization standard.
It was super interesting to deep-dive into new technologies as you may sometimes notice fundamental principles shared across different technological domains — I highly recommend this intellectually stimulating experience!

Lesson 3— Distilling Technical Insights In Layman Terms

Through my best efforts, I tried to make my technical and ‘devlog-style’ articles easier to read for laymen.
I’m not able to confidently say that every layman could easily understand my “Becoming A Metaverse Developer” article where I shared about Unity and C# Game Programming, but hey, at least two of my friends found it helpful to kickstart their game programming projects.
I’m sure this skill of distilling technical subjects to laymen will come in handy in the future, so I’m super excited for when that time comes!

Lesson 4 — Dealing With Writer’s Block

If you haven’t sat down to write write (yes — like ‘write, you know, like actual writing), you are warned against this nightmare for all writers: Writer’s Block.
Writer’s Block refers to a period of creative slowdown or a specific moment when your mind goes instantly blank, completely shutting down your ability to write.
During such occasions, I learned to either take a break from writing or do the classic stream-of-consciousness writing (a.k.a brain dump) method. Give it a shot when you’re stuck during a writing session next time. It’ll honestly help to spark more creativity!

Lesson 5— Revisiting My In(complete) Work

The best way I’ve found to improve a piece of writing is simply to revisit it with a fresh mind so I can spot all the errors I couldn't before.
The duration before I revisit my work can range from hours to days, and maybe even weeks!
To ensure my writing is clear and concise, I’d sometimes even go for a run to clear my mind before revisiting my work to refine it. Trust me when I say this works — and it works really well.

Lesson 6 — The Power of Habits

Image by PublicDomainPictures via Pixabay

Are there times in my life when I felt so extremely overwhelmed by the busyness of my work and life that I didn’t feel like writing another article? You bet!
However, I didn’t rely on “motivation” to write one article consistently each month. I relied on habits — the habits of writing consistently.
Though difficult initially, once I conscientiously built the habit of writing by simply sitting down and ‘forcing’ myself to write on numerous occasions, I slowly grew my writing muscles. By building such habits, I gradually found it easier to write and has fewer of those ‘ughh’ writing moments.

Lesson 7— Ditch Grammarly, Learn Proper Grammar

I’m just kidding. Don’t do that. (As in, don’t ditch Grammarly. But please learn proper grammar!) (this is probably a grammatically incorrect statement but whatever)
Though it was tempting to delegate Grammarly as my catch-all error buddy, I still tried to (re)learn grammar while I’m writing — especially knowing how important it is.
I’m not an English teacher but I’m happy to say that I’ve at least learned several grammatical rules like the proper usage of colons, parenthesis, and em-dashes. Fun fact: there are different writing standards that may advocate different usage of punctuation.

Lesson 8 — In and Outs of LinkedIn & Medium

I published all of my articles on both Medium and LinkedIn.
Needless to say, I learned about the quirks of each platform, such as the (in)ability to add headers, image captions, and dividers. Though it may seem minor, I believe they are critical to making your writing more readable.
Also, since writing this article, LinkedIn has improved its writing platform so there’s no need for me to use the hack-ish quoted triple asterisk (***) divider workaround anymore:”)
(if you ever read my LinkedIn article on mobile devices, this is the reason why there is a weird triple asterisk in my articles)

Lesson 9 — Writing Etiquette for Publications

Do you know that there are best writing practices that differ from publication to publication?
Though I was initially surprised too, I eventually understood why. Different publication caters to different audiences, thus the content you produce may need to vary based on length, writing style, etc. to suit those specific audiences.
I think such writing standards can be beneficial because readers could easily know what types of articles to expect in a publication. For writers, such standards serve as a helpful guideline too.

Lesson 10 — Gained Newfound Appreciation for Fields Like Psychology

In an attempt to step out of my comfort zone, I explored fields outside of computer science through this writing movement.
In several articles, I shared about mental health, psychology, and even the cognitive science behind machines and biases.
By researching, learning, and introspecting on ideas that are foreign to me, I undoubtedly gained a deeper appreciation for different fields of study such as cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience — super dope!

Lesson 11 — Gaining Self Awareness

There are two parts to this. Firstly, I’m more aware of my preferred writing style. My articles tend to be lengthier because I firmly believe that context is important for most lessons I’m trying to share.
Such awareness made me curious to try shorter, more concise forms of writing. Thus sometimes you may find some shorter 3–4 minute length of articles I’ve written.
Also, I’m more aware of the mental processes, habits, and environment which provides the optimal mental clarity for me to craft a great piece of writing.

Lesson 12 — Becoming More Open-Minded

During the earlier stage of writing, I’d often seek advice from my friends regarding the content I’m about to write.
I see the value of being open-minded because I truly received so much wonderful feedback, like bolding words more mindfully, adding more images so the article is more interesting to read, and more.
As I conclude my final lesson, I hope to give a huge shout-out to my long-time supporters: Pei Qi, Razan, Jeffery, Ian, and Veron!
Thank you guys so much! 🤗🤗

That’s a wrap! (and closing thoughts)

This article officially marks the end of the #CrystalizeMyLearning movement where I learn through writing.

It has been a crazy twelve months of juggling between military service, volunteering work, and writing one article each month, amongst many other things.

To all my readers, I sincerely thank you for your support. Even though I may step away from formal writing for a while — mostly to recharge — I have learned so much during the past twelve months, and I’ll definitely continue creating more content in the future.

I hope you found this article interesting. If any of my writing resonates with you, I’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn.

Thank you so much for reading and following me on this year-long journey! I’ll catch you in my (not-so-soon) next article. Cheers!!! 😁😁