Is at least what I said to myself this morning, thinking about writing as a daily practice, the sturm um drang of posting in between thoughts to a many-to-many text based services and the value of a group chat.
I like reading other people’s process stories. I’ve been struggling not to subscribe to Culture Study from Ann Friedman because she put her own process post, how she schedules her time behind a paywall. But that’s more reading that I can’t fit into a week when I’m already struggling. I’ve been reading Applied Cartography from Justin Duke who’s Buttondown I use for newsletter (could I newsletter instead of blog? Feels.. different somehow.)
It’s all in service of getting better at writing straightforwardly when I do publish “professionally”. Getting it out before my editor brain pummels it into something contorted (which is usually uncontorted by a real person editor, not the one in my brain). But also because I write to understand, and defending reported stories can get me very far to understanding, but in a very slow way. And also because I recognize that I do want to share my process, my thinking, my actions and pathways. I just want to manage it the way that feels best for me. That might change. I was spending some time doing short just-for-me vlogs about my daily work. Then I got covid (very light) then it was the holidays and then my year got away from me again.
If I’m going to be writing a lot, might as well be in service of myself.