So today is January 15. and thus the halfway mark of the #januarystreak challenge first proposed by @dragosroua. I quickly jumped on the train and shared the challenge myself alongside a post urging others to join the #januarystreak for a good start to the new year. And while it's obviously too late to go a full month of posting every day if you've missed a few days already, it's not too late to start using the tag and keep it up for the remainder of the month 😉.

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^{Too often have I been stuck like this glaring down at an empty slate struggling to get what's crystal clear in my mind down on paper. And it's been real tiresome at times. But thankfully, I've gotten better, and continue to improve.}

Anyhow, having now managed to make a post every day so far, I thought I would share some of my experience and also ask what tips or tricks any of you might have to make the writing process, simpler, smoother, more enjoyable, more consistent etc. I must say that I've been quite fatigued by it for quite a few days. Especially when work also presented peaks of things that had to be done at the same time, sitting down afterward to hustle through an article was not exactly what I wanted to do the most. But then again, that could be seen as a benefit of having such challenges every once in a while if it does succeed in pushing ourselves to do more, with a financial benefit, than we otherwise would. In any case, I think it shows that doing a minimum of 2 posts per week, as I've promised myself in my #hivegoals for 2022 post, fits me better. While I do think persistent writing can be healthy, making it feel stressful and exhausting isn't. This leads me to the main motivation for writing this article:

What are some good writing habits or strategies to follow?

Inventing versus documenting

First of all, I think one has to distinguish between articles that aim to create versus document. It's a difference that i was first made aware of thanks to the famous entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, also known as Gary Vee (see his twitter). Below is a video with a call for aspiring entrepreneurs to start with "documenting" rather than "creating" with the purpose of simply getting started (which aligns well with my lesson in motivation that I shared in a post yesterday where I made the concluding call that one should "start by doing".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVKofRN1dyI

My own struggles with "creating"

In the past, I've often been stuck with an article that I want to write in which I am trying to present a new idea, do a thorough analysis, or invent something new. Those always require not only deep work and concentration but also more precise formulation and explanation. One wouldn't want to have a good idea go lost because it isn't communicated well enough, right? Writing an article like this is difficult enough to do every week, let alone every day. It also requires different habits and strategies with regards to setting aside sufficient time, thinking through how one wants to structure the idea or argument as to be easily understood and accepted by the reader.

This is in stark contrast to content that is simply "documenting" events, whether it be something happening in your own life, or in the world around you. Documenting allows you to simply write what is, without needing to think through if it's good or bad, clever or stupid. Although less difficult, this is often more popular for people to consume. People like stories, and to follow those working towards a goal, doing something funny or crazy, and to see what that's like. Understanding that the two require different time and attention, as well as structure and approach, is a good starting point. This is why at the beginning of each article I ask myself, "am I trying to create or document something with this article?"

That will determine my approach and expectations accordingly.

Having a writing process

I'm sure there is a lot to be gained from a structured writing process. This is something I've sucked at myself. Or rather, have hardly adapted and implemented at all, despite knowing that it's valuable. Instead, I've long been guilty of being stuck looking at an empty slate, or early on in the first paragraph, thinking of where to go next rather than where I am eventually going to. I know this has to end if I want to communicate my ideas as well as they deserve. They are pretty damn good ideas after all!

Drafting

A good place to start is by brainstorming to get all "The big ideas" that one wants to communicate written down as a beginning. Ideally, one could also try and get the order of thoughts in their right places, to at least outline from what statement one wants to begin, through what arguments one wants to make, to which conclusion one wants to draw. This should, obviously, be done without much thought to spelling, sentence structures, or perfect articulations (likely what I've been guilty of before). Instead, it is perhaps better to simply ask oneself "what the hell am I thinking? Why is this interesting? Why do I care about this enough to write about it? What are the things that make me the most convinced about the truth or good about the point I am about to make?

This is the ideal place to make your inner perfectionist cry a river. Get the thoughts out with no damn care for details!

Revising

Once that's done, it's time to think more deeply about the content of the arguments or the purpose of the story. Again, language may be imperfect, so don't get too stuck in it. Here, it's clever to think more from the perspective of the reader, where are they coming from when they read your article? What are their expectations? What opinions on the subject are they likely to hold going in? How will you go about convincing them that your argument or knowledge is worth taking in?

This is where I like to take in some of the experience I have from oral presentations. There, I hardly have a lot of text on each slide. Instead, I try to find a few key messages that I want to make and articulate them perfectly, ideally in just a sentence. Once the main arguments are structured correctly, articulated well, and in the right order, the rest of the article tends to fall in place as one is basically just guiding the reader through the key arguments.

Editing

And at last, it's "finally" time to let the inner perfectionist who was anxious that there could be poor spelling and sentence structures earlier do its thing. Take the time and read through your writing to find errors and sentences that are hard to swallow. I've found that it's beneficial to read the article backwards(!). Starting at the end, read the last sentence first (from its beginning though) with the intention of finding errors. It's too easy when reading from the start to get dragged into your own story, and focus more on how genius your ideas and arguments are that you fail to notice spelling errors as you read fast. Editing is for spell-checking and word choice, so focus on that!

Conclusion

There may or may not be a perfect process for writing articles, but having a strategy is better than just starting at the beginning and writing without a goal, especially when writing to "invent". Good habits about when in the day to set aside time for writing is probably just as important. And I would probably be better off with having such a time rather than just doing it after I'm done working and have come home from the gym in the evening.

Doing the #januarystreak challenge, and thus forcing myself to write more often, as well as writing this article, has already made me more conscious of how I approach writing. Perhaps I can do more than 2 per week after all? Or perhaps I am now able to do 2 articles of much higher quality and deeper meaning than I was before.

In any case, despite some fatigue, I'm glad that I've been doing this writing challenge (so far), and am yet again grateful to be on Hive!

Hive on :)