The Ultimate 3 P’s of Writing
Every writer must execute on these 3 p words or perish, which is the p word to avoid.
I like writing big, meaty blogs with lots of advice. But I find myself coming across a lot of short blogs with titles like “The 5 Mistakes You Have NO Idea You’re Making Right Now!” or “The 7 Habits of People Who Are Better Than You!” or “13 Ways to Make Money Like a Kardashian (but from writing)”.
A sort of numerology has taken over the blogosphere. So naturally I want to try my hand at it.
Polish
Not the sausage, the verb. (There’s a joke about sausage-making here somewhere, but I’m not biting.) It’s work, and learning, and applying that learning to do more work.
Still, finding originality is hard.
But if you grind and sweat and get intimate with your own writing, if you get to know yourself on a deeper level and use that to power your writing, you’ll find originality. That’s how you produce a raw diamond.
But will anyone other than your parents want to read your raw diamond? Of course not. That’s why this section is titled Polish. Do it until the writing sparkles.
Presentation
It’s like when you’re going out on a nice date or to a happening party, you want to look good. When it’s out in public, your writing wants to look good, too.
Presentation is dependent on context. What are you publishing in? How much customization is available? What expectations do readers have? I’ve published on Wordpress sites, GitHub pages, custom HTML websites, blogging platforms, wikis, and so on. To look good, it was important for me to understand how they worked. And they’re all different.
If you’re serious about publishing your work, spend some time learning the ins-and-outs of the target platform. Look at other published content for ideas and to understand the limits. If you have no control over presentation, find out who does and lobby for what you want.
Publish
Are you afraid of failure? Of course you are. We all are. To be able to fail without consequence is a privilege not all of us are born with. But avoiding risk is a recipe for a greater failure.
Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.
Maya Angelou said that. She was a poet and playwright and other amazing things. I didn’t have the pleasure of interviewing her, but I’m sure she was afraid of failure in some way or she wouldn’t have said that. She was courageous and she published her work.
So don’t work on a piece forever. Don’t keep finding reasons not to publish. Push the button and launch your work! After you polish, after you understand presentation.
And then you might have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous responses. Or of crickets. But you keep going.
Lou Reed was broke and pretty much hit rock bottom after leaving the Velvet Underground and putting out a dud for his first solo album. Then he put out an album called Transformer that became a timeless classic. He didn’t give up.
So don’t give up. Work and publish. There’s no magic formula to great writing other than working hard and taking risks.
