on writing
reflections from a 1-month-old writer
howdy friends, happy wednesday!
I've been writing for just over a month now, and I feel like it's time for a small reflection on how it's been going, where I'm at, and where things might be headed next.
on process
Before we can go do something, we need to expend a certain level of mental activation energy to hype ourselves up to do the thing.
Let's say I woke up one day convinced that I will go quit my job and solve world hunger. Where should I start? How many shipping containers would I need? Can I DM the President of the United Nations on LinkedIn? How do I purchase 1,000,000 pounds of potatoes without getting on the Interpol watch list? Maybe I should just go back to sleep.1
Conversely, routine tasks like toothbrushing or unlocking my phone take very little activation energy. I could probably brush my teeth like 20 times every day and still have enough mental energy to plan a bank heist.2
Right now, writing is around the 'going to the gym' level for me: while it takes some effort to pick myself up and go start, I can get into the flow pretty quickly and stay there until I’m done with whatever I’m trying to write.
I'd estimate that 90% of the words and 70% of the research I produce for this newsletter are done on Wednesdays after 5:30pm. For some reason I can't get myself to write a little bit every day like everyone suggests, but at least my Wednesday nights are very productive. I guess that's what years of last-minute paper writing will do to ya :)
The main problem with this approach is that words become a cheap commodity. Although I'm getting good at blazing towards a presentable idea as time- and energy-efficiently as possible, 'concise' and 'elegant' are not suitable adjectives for my prose at present.
My next goal is to change this.
I can't just think really hard about this problem and come up with an answer. I also can't keep doing exactly what I've been doing. So it's time to try out some process changes:
Do my research and figure out what I want to write early (i.e. not Tuesday night). That way, my ideas will get more chances to get struck by the inspirational lighting bolts throughout the week.
Write fewer words. I had no target length this month, but somehow I naturally settled on ~1500 words as what I found necessary to convey my thoughts. If I trim this down to say 1000 words, each word will hold quite a bit more weight.
Be more intentional about what I'm reading. Random reddit/twitter posts do not help. Novels, great blog posts, and poetry on the other hand are fantastic launchpads for learning.
Talk to more people about writing. Feedback is incredibly important, and I've gathered some really useful insights already.
on engagement
So far, it seems like 20ish people read this newsletter every week-- enough to fill a small classroom. I probably know a bit more than half of you (hihi!!)
Having taught classes of a similar size for two years as a college TA, this audience size feels pretty comfy to me. Funnily enough, engagement is very similar too: hardly anyone raises their hand during class but a lot of people come in during office hours; hardly anyone comments on posts but I get to have some fun conversations with y'all IRL/online from time to time.
Doing stuff in public is scary, and that's ok! I don’t raise my hand during class or leave comments on other people’s posts either. (yet. i’m working on it...)
We humans suck at thinking about exponential growth.3 What do you mean, if I put $100/month into a 401k I'll have a million dollars in 30 years? What is this otherworldly magic?
The internet is one of these exponential phenomena. Right now, I'm chilling at the flat part of the curve and having a great time. I hope this will last a while longer, in that I'm writing to someone, but still mostly for me.
I already knew this about myself before, but I've confirmed it over the last few weeks: I'm not a social media person. I don't feel any need to tell everyone what I'm doing all the time.
But even if I'm not going out of my way to post my stuff at every street corner, the mere act of putting content onto the internet consistently means that something will inevitably blow up.
This will be great for meeting a lot of new people and gathering support for doing exciting things, but it comes with some risks I'm not ready to take on yet. Hopefully by then I will be prepared (current prediction: 3-4 years from now, no earlier).
In the meantime, I'll keep using this as a ramp for my larger experiment of building things in public. I believe there's a lot of merit in sharing the intermediate state of an end result, in all its imperfect glory.
Seeing what happens to this relatively small, inconsequential corner of the internet will serve as a good gauge for what I can expect for other projects, and continue acting as a way to connect with people in a way I don't usually get to.
on finding a voice
In the last thousand or so words I've pondered the future who and how of this newsletter. I'd like to address the what and why for a bit too.
One of my original goals for this project is to find and cultivate my writing voice. While I feel like I've refined my thought processes and ability to put words onto a page, I still can't quite convey emotion and intent in a way I'm satisfied with.
For example, you now know more about the history of El Camino Real than the average person, but I didn't do a good job of letting you know how I felt walking along it, or why I thought the topic was important enough for me to justify spending hours of my life obsessing over it.
Ultimately, I'm making this for you to read, not me. I'm making this to entertain, inform, bask in the comfort of shared experience-- but most importantly, to make you feel something.
While I'm making this under the guise of learning how to write, writing is really part of the greater ideal of self-expression. Because what's the point of living if I just keep it all to myself?
I'll see you all next week! Thank you for being a part of the journey so far, the best is yet to come :)
-bencuan
🏝️extras
food for thought: the universe may stop expanding in five billion years - read by savannah brown
stalk my online reading: Curius
stalk my offline reading: bencuan.me/bookshelf
stalk me on twitter: @bencuan_
ww mad libs: Want to suggest a topic for a future Wednesday? play the whimsical wednesday mad libs!
This is why it's important to break down massive visions into achievable steps. "Become a best-selling author" is a seemingly impossible task that is mostly beyond our control. But after you start writing something every day, then publish something in a local magazine, then write a novel, you're already most of the way there!
This is very illegal and there are a million better ways to make money. That doesn't mean it's not fun to think about anyways.
This claim is supported by: the year 2020
Just wanted to chime in and say I really enjoy your writing!