An Imperfect Process (1/30)

Thirty essays in thirty days, part two

Lately I’ve been experiencing something adjacent to writer’s block. It’s not that I sit and stare at the blank page, unable to conjure up a concept—there’s plenty to write about, and I don’t have much trouble getting started. The trouble comes in the middle. I feel like I’m being blocked from seeing ideas through to completion. I start pulling on a thread, get a little momentum, and then suddenly a wall appears, keeping me from immersing myself in the process or believing that what I’m working on has any traction. It’s like getting up the foothills of a mountain to find that the trail that you came to hike is closed.

My friend

Camilo Moreno-Salamanca

wrote a great piece about the apparent antithesis of quantity and quality when it comes to mastering a craft like writing. It’s an eternal question: is it better to focus on consistency and output and trust that over time quality will emerge, or should the top priority be cultivating quality and developing skill, however slow that process turns out to be?

This got me thinking about my own process. If someone asked me my opinion on the quantity/quality thing, or anything else process-related, I’d say that it depends. It depends on the writer’s nature, how long they’ve been writing, what sort of challenges they tend to face. Ultimately, the best strategy is the one that works, and what works on a given day may fail to do so the next. But my own process has remained mostly static. Because I tend to be pretty averse to structure and rules, including those that are self-imposed, my general approach has been to write most days and publish when I have something to say, whenever that may be.

This worked really well for me until it didn’t.

Camilo’s piece made me realize that I ought to practice what I preach. I can rail against rules and rigidity all day, but it’s a bit hypocritical if I continue hammering away at a process that has stopped working for me. The definition of insanity etc etc.

Back when I started writing, I found myself in a similar rut to the one I’m in now. I kept starting a bunch of grand pieces that didn’t go anywhere. While it was tempting to try and analyze every potential root cause of the roadblock—probably some mix of perfectionism, self-image, and inexperience—it became clear that a problem of the mind wasn’t going to be solved through the mind. The only answer was action.

I decided to take on a challenge I had seen others tackle: writing an essay every day for thirty days. This approach was purpose-built to pierce through perfectionism and stasis through brute force—a terrible strategy for my typical nature, but exactly what I needed given the circumstances. It worked like a charm. The constraint cured me of all the gunky reluctance that had accumulated, and I was freed up to return to my preferred (lack of) process. My Google Docs and I lived happily ever after. 

Until now, that is. Which has me thinking that it’s time to do it again.

I have my hang-ups about this. The first time I did it, my parents made up 10% of my subscriber base. While it’s by no means large now, that number has grown enough that my ego feels like it has something to lose. I expect I’ll scare off a sizable amount of you, dear subscribers, by showing up in your inbox every day for a month with essays that may hit or miss.

But this presents a wonderful opportunity to remind myself that, while I am and will always remain incredibly grateful that anyone invites my writing into their world, allowing me a piece of their time, and by extension their lives, acquiring a bunch of subscribers is not why I’m doing this. If it was, I would have pivoted to writing about How to Create Passive Income, Extend Your Lifespan, and Save the Koalas Using AI, or something, long ago.   

I do this because I really enjoy it, and because it allows me to connect with wonderful people who are compatible with the contents and contours of my ever-evolving mind. My current process keeps me from doing much real writing at all—which, by definition, keeps me from enjoying it or connecting with anyone. So it’s time to shake it up.

This is one of thirty. Strap in.