Why does this site exist?
Stated simply - this website exists because I am doing the hard thing.
And for me, the hard thing just so happens to be writing. Not literally, I know how words go together to form a sentence, and I can hold a pen for about half a page before my hand starts to cramp.
No. I'm talking about the kind of writing you put out in public. Writing that is deliberate in its message. Writing that requires you to expose your thinking to the world. The kind of writing that makes you vulnerable.
For context, besides the occasional technical design document that my work requires, I haven't produced any substantive text artifact since I left high school almost 15 years ago.
I live a chronically online life that means I'm probably at some kind of keyboard at least 10 hours a day - every day. But the characters I'm producing aren't the valuable kind. They're the instant messaging, fire-and-forget type—don't worry about the mistakes because they're gone in an instant.
So I'm not good at writing, and don't misunderstand me, I'm not beating myself up over this. I don't play the piano. And so if I were to sit down at a piano, I wouldn't sit there scratching my head and wondering why I can't tap out a tune. I wouldn't be able to play because I haven't put in the hard hours of work to develop the skill.
I think writing is much the same. The muscles haven't atrophied, they were never there to begin with.
Some of this desire to become a better writer is undoubtedly tied up in self-worth, and a desire to produce things that I am proud of. A lot of the books I've read these past 18 months talk about responsibility, accountability, intentional decision making as key factors in developing healthy self-esteem.
If I can capture my thoughts and intentions in writing, then I can better express them in conversation, or perhaps in other creative mediums in future.
I've identified three specific vectors that I can start working on: clarity of message, crafting compelling stories, and improving the grammatical and structural elements of my writing.
Firstly, clarity of message. One of my great strengths is that I tend to think laterally. Where one person might hear a fact as given, my mind has a natural tendency to branch across many other abstractly related topics, allowing me to find links where others see none. This might sometimes be called "outside the box" thinking.
While this works great for me, to the outsider looking in, it can be unclear how I started at point A and arrived at point Z. Writing is a vehicle through which I can describe this process and transform what might look like a chaotic stream into a meaningful message.
Secondly, I'm interested in the power of stories. Professor Scott Galloway has this great piece on storytelling. He makes the case for storytelling being the most valuable skill a person can learn. Now, I don't know about that, but there's undoubtedly some truth in what he's saying. Your ideas only have value if you can convince other people that they have value too.
Building the underlying systems to recall specific quotes and factoids will be essential to improving this skill. Two of my favourite authors Robert Greene and Ryan Holiday are excellent at this, and I will certainly be leaning on their writings for future inspiration.
And finally, the grammar and structure of my writing. What I really mean here is the objective quality of my words. The use of correct vocabulary, escaping my overuse of the comma in favour of full sentences. And laying out my thoughts such that each claim is supported and forms a cohesive narrative.
Even in this short post I'm learning just how hard this is going to be. These past ten minutes as I try to round out a summary, the desire to hit CMD A and backspace swells up inside me.
Why does this site exist? I started writing this post thinking it was about developing a skill. But as I've sat here I've realised that's not true at all.
This site exists to combat fear. Fear of failure, fear of not being good enough, fear of being judged, fear of intellectual inadequacy.
Now please excuse me, I'm going to press publish and supress the desire to vomit.