Oct 1, 2022
How It’s Like to Write as a High Schooler (Mostly Pros)
Some random thoughts dumping, for the most part.
First of all, I assume it’s a lot easier than writing along with your 9–5. But that doesn’t mean it’s a cakewalk.
I have been writing on this platform for well over a year. I love it. The community, stories, and Medium’s minimalistic editor I am currently typing on.
Without any further ado, let’s get to the pros and cons of writing as a teenager or high schooler.
What do you write about?
Anything that comes to my mind. It’s a perk though.
I have written everything from poetry to the metaverse. That’s wide, right?
I know I will have to narrow it down after a point as it’s not feasible to write about anything and everything. I am not Wikipedia.
But writing as a teenager gave me the freedom to appreciate the vastness and diversity. It also gave me an opportunity to explore those realms and write about them.
It was funny how I used to decide what I should write next based on a cool video I watched or an amazing Quora answer I read.
Now I am pretty confident about where I want to go and I will try to tune my writing accordingly. But at the same time, I also can’t forget how much freedom I enjoyed writing on a variety of topics.
When do you write?
Anytime I want to. Except for those study hours.
I don’t remember ever having a writing routine. There was simply no need for that at all.
Someone even asked me once how I maintained to post every day, when I used to. He will be disappointed in me today.
I simply replied not having one at all. I did clarify that being a teenager that’s not necessary as you have ample free time.
I took it for granted for the longest time. Now things are changing and with every passing day, I am more confident a routine helps in being consistent.
Writing is primary; engagement is secondary
I wound keep that in the mindset bucket. When I started, engagement did not matter to me that much.
But as I spent some time, I observed it became my go-to place for having a dose of dopamine as if it were a part of my diet.
I wrote and read a lot of articles on stats and number of followers and dissected everything Medium.
Then, after a couple of months, I thought I had had enough. It is now time to redirect that focus to the more important stuff.
I read books and wrote about them — the lessons I learned. I read history and wrote about the topics I found interesting.
This diversity provided me with an escape from the echo chamber of how to rearrange some pixels on the screen.
Engagement became secondary and the process of writing became the primary matter of concern.
Sometimes that notion returns when the articles I spent hours researching and structuring get views in double digits and an article I wrote on a whim gets views in thousands.
Over time, I have adjusted to reality. Now I’ll try to post a mix of those.
You have a wider perspective than 99% of people
“I know a little about a lot of things. But I don’t know a lot about everything.” — Samuel J. Wurzelbacher
It’s never humanly possible to know everything about everything. But having knowledge about a variety of subjects gives you more dots to connect.
An illustration from David Perell’s Twitter account beautifully illustrates it.
Writing is like connecting dots that you’ve gathered from reading wide-ranging stuff. It provides you with clarity apart from making you more knowledgeable on a variety of subjects.
Closing Thoughts
So what exactly are the benefits and what is it like to write as a teenager?
I asked that question to myself when I was writing the title of the article. It turns out it is just as normal as practising any other form of art. It is the same as exploring the domain of what catches your fancy.
Be it journaling or writing a diary entry. Painting. Travelling. Programming. Designing. Spirituality. Anything.
In the end, the biggest benefit of writing is that I get to do what I enjoy doing the most.
Writing as a teenager does become exhaustive sometimes. Managing studies and taking out time to write and edit is easy most of the time. So no complains here.
But every day is not like the previous one. That’s the best part, and sometimes the worst.
