A few reflections after trying to write something every day.

1. Writing anything good or worthwhile takes a long (ass) time

Henrik Karlsson on Substack writes it takes him between ‘10 and 200’ hours to write an essay. A typical Astral Codex Ten post takes 10-30 hours. Murakami writes 4-6 hours every morning, and still only produces 1 short chapter a day. Countless other examples, where writing demands time where they are often re-writing, re-framing, or scrapping it entirely.

This is not including the time it takes to research, to think, to live those experiences (which arguably is the entirety of your life and becoming.)

People literally have full time 30-40+ hour jobs, just writing on Substack.

It’s nice to know that when you read something good, it’s taken a long time to write. The writers clearly have spent days, months sometimes, meticulously re-writing and refining those sentences. (Which in the digital age, you can just scroll past since no one reads anymore).

So for this small little personal blog, I can lower my standards (Henrik Karlsson’s post on having a ‘shit blog’ is fantastic). I usually get <30 minutes to bash out something, although for longer posts, I have been thinking about the topic for a while.

But any act of inching towards having an ongoing writing practice is worth it for me. You get to think on the page, form opinions and worldviews. It’s like learning anything really, you’ve got to put in the quantity. For an amateur, it’s ok to lower your standards for writing, and use it mainly as a personal vehicle for expression.

2. It’s made me pay much more attention

I’ll admit I’m an infovore. I consume podcasts like its nothing. I suspect everyone is doing this though; we live in a broadcast culture, constantly being fed information.

It would be great if the mind worked like the matrix, you would just download the information and be on your way. But that is not how learning works. One has to actively engage and wrestle with the material - write about it, have a conversation, make something with the knowledge.

Having to write everyday does give me an output tap for the vast amount of information coming in. Admittedly, it is like a tsunami on the input, and a glass of water on the output. But it’s better than nothing.

Half the time I try to sit down and write about it, I can summarise it in a few sentences (Not worth posting) but as I write those sentences, I realise that you can go really deep into this topic. You can just keep on going in fact.

But since time is limited, I take whatever ideas I can get ,see if I can apply them to my life, or bring them up in conversation, and be on my merry way.

3. I’ve been reading more

Trying to do something yourself, just makes you appreciate it more when someone does do it well.

Before attempting to learn the drums, I would listen to the drums on a song, and say that sounded good. But after learning for a couple of months, I now appreciate the level of craft that goes into it.

So in writing, I’m inspired to read the good stuff. So I read more! I don’t know if that makes sense, but I’m glad I’m finally reading.

Saying all of that, my time is up, and I’ve got to go to work! If I had more time, I would have written something more concise, more insightful, and engaging, but sadly I do not.