I just posted my third piece of writing online since creating this website back in August. Even with only three pieces posted in the last three months, I’m feeling a lot better about my progress writing than I did in the first half of 2019. Back then, I was mostly focused on writing with regularity. I bought a Moleskine notebook and told myself that I would write at least 1,000 words, five days a week, about whatever topic I chose. I roughly stuck with that schedule through February, got a little behind in March and then pretty much stopped writing by April. So overall it was a bit of a disappointment, even though I got a couple of useful ideas out of that time I can expand upon at a later point.
Not until August did I really start writing again (other than brief thoughts jotted down here and there), and it coincided with creating this website. While I’ve definitely written far less frequently than I did earlier in the year, I’m a lot happier with the end product. Regardless of the quality of my writing (my “readers” – parents – can be the judge of that), the process I’ve taken feels a lot more intentional than anything I did prior. I have actually committed to my ideas, which is a far cry from the ten or so short stories ideas I quit on back in February, and that has forced me to think more about my audience and less about simply getting my thoughts on the page.
For this last piece about my grandfather, I intentionally began by writing some thoughts by hand in my journal. I even taped the picture I ended up posting online onto a page for inspiration. Not surprisingly, since the picture is of a meal with Grandad, I began with my thoughts on our meals together. That initial exercise informed a lot of how I wrote about individual memories I had with him, particularly how we have spent most of our time together since high school.
After that first pass, I took a week off before revisiting the idea. I started completely from scratch and this time around the idea of Grandad as disciplinarian came out. I ended up writing much of the first half of the essay in that sitting. After that, I typed up both sections, fleshed out a lot of the particular memories, and sat on the essay for about two weeks as I thought about to handle the transition from childhood memories and descriptions of my grandfather to our friendship, which was ultimately what I saw as the central point of the essay. I then capped the essay with an introduction and some sort of ending, which are also my least favorite parts of the piece.
All of that is to say that I followed a real write-rethink-rewrite process that made me much more proud of the end result than I would have been if I had simply jotted down some thoughts in a journal and left it at that. I definitely need to increase the frequency and volume of my writing if I want to see significant improvement in the next year or so, but it seems more important to build strong underlying processes first, and then build from there, instead of pushing high volume writing that is scattered and undetermined.
I initially created this website because I felt it would help inspire me to write more and provide a sort of accountability (to my nonexistent fans) for my writing, and I think the second piece has largely come true. Knowing I have this website sitting dormant forces my hand a bit in publishing that next piece (at least it has for the last three pieces I wrote), mostly because it feels like a waste of my money otherwise. Money really is a great motivator. As far as writing more, I don’t think it’s done much to influence me there. Partly because this is a public forum, I feel less inclined to sit down and reel something off quickly, instead focusing more on the process I mentioned above. At least at the moment, that may actually hinder my ability to produce a lot of content. I’m happy to take accountability over quantity for the time being.
Let’s see where I am in another couple of months.