Recently I was writing the post “Understanding and learning to use my superpower, determination“. When I set out to write that post, I had no plan. I woke up from bed with many thoughts running through my head on the topic, and felt that by giving them form, through writing, I’d be able to better understand them and perhaps come to a useful, actionable conclusion.
While writing that post, I realised something else that’s extremely useful – writing does more than just give thoughts form. It allows for new, related thoughts to emerge; it is tapping into the muse and opening yourself to inspiration. And those emerging thoughts come from and relate to knowledge I didn’t know I had. Or, from knowledge that I’m not ‘actively’ storing in my brain. It’s just there, passively filed away from past learnings – be that reading, watching videos, talking to people, whatever.
What writing does is allow for 1) the re-emergence of that knowledge, if it’s relevant to the subject at hand, and 2) the recognition that you actually have that knowledge. This, in turn, helps you to recognise the power of your own mind – your intelligence. Further, it actually puts that knowledge and intelligence to use, rather than leaving it in ‘cold storage’.
Further, once we recognise this to be true, it spurs a desire to learn more. The more I know, the better my writing becomes, since I’m able to both connect more dots and to connect existing dots better.
As a result, a positive cycle of growth is created:
- I want to learn more to write better
- I want to write to make use of the knowledge I’ve learned
- My intelligence is used and recognised when writing, improving my brain and in turn my writing
- A desire to learn more and write more is created
I imagine this is most pronounced when writing is a habit and done on a regular basis. When first writing this post in July, I did not write regularly. I’d liked to, but it had become an activity that was triggered through random inspiration. And then I’d be captivated at a page for however long, lost in the Flow of writing, often following the desire to get words on the page more than the outcome of the piece itself. For example, the previously mentioned piece on determination led to the writing of this post. I felt I had so many thoughts in my head that needed writing and had to chase them. The result is this.
I’m beginning to rant, but the following is on topic. One problem with my current relationship with writing is that, as a result of this pursuit of new pieces and desire to give thoughts form, I often leave work unfinished. This is the case on both a macro and micro scale. On the macro, I’ll jump between upper-level ideas. The exploration of these macro ideas often takes the form of articles. These form the base of what I want to explore.
On the micro, I’ll frequently leave paragraphs or sections unfinished because a new idea has caught my attention and ‘requires’ writing, lest I forget what I was going to say. These are ideas that exist within a macro idea. They are related, in some way, to the overall idea. And as a result are connected to each other and work together to create a form for the macro idea. Kinda like Power Rangers. Kinda.
Sometimes, a macro idea can lead to another macro idea, just like a micro idea can lead to a micro idea. And sometimes micro ideas lead to macro ideas. But rarely do macro ideas lead to unrelated micro ideas.
In some ways, leaving sentences unfinished is good, as it’s easier to pick up a half-finished sentence to remember where you were. In others, it’s akin to shiny object syndrome or even ADHD. Of course, the new idea doesn’t need to be written, but the appeal of exploring the idea overwhelms the desire to finish any existing thought. I’ve done this at least 3 times in this post so far. And that’s before going back to the unfinished piece on determination that triggered this post, and all the accompanying incompletions within that post.
So, is this a problem? It depends on my perspective and goals. If I’m writing purely for enjoyment, no, it’s not a problem. The most pleasurable thing to do, when in the mode of writing, is to chase ideas and see where they take me. I’ve been captivated by a/the Muse, by Flow, and now it’s a matter of seeing where this journey together goes. I don’t know the words I’m going to write before I type them. I just… write. They pour from me as if from an abundant source of knowledge, gaining form and structure and the ability to convey ideas, but there is rarely conscious effort involved.
Of course, sometimes I have to think of a word that best describes what I mean, but I believe this will improve with practice and by expanding my vocabulary. When in this state, there is little conscious effort. My fingers move alone. I know what to type before typing, and seemingly paradoxically at the same time, I don’t know what I’m going to type. Often I can hear my thoughts saying the words to write next (usually only 1 or 2 ahead of the current written word), and having a high typing speed is a very nice compliment to the speed of my mind, but this is part of the automated behaviour, rarely a conscious decision on my part.
This has turned into a bit of a brain dump, but one other thing I want to write about – the use of finding a niche. The earlier-mentioned idea of storing knowledge and accessing that knowledge through writing is most effective when that knowledge is deep in a given niche or area of expertise. This contributes to Robert Greene’s idea of mastery. The idea of depth or expertise, paired with writing, must be immensely intrinsically pleasurable.
However, I am by nature a polymath. My specialism is in connecting ideas from a variety of areas, being able to communicate those ideas well, and using knowledge and ideas from multiple other niches to help describe and connect concepts about the primary topic.
So, while I’d love to pick a single niche and go deep into it, that runs counter to my nature. I’m not built that way. Sure, I could pick two, maybe three, niches and learn say 60-80% of the depth of mastery, then combine the knowledge of each to satisfy that nature. But I find value and enjoyment in exposing myself to a broad range of ideas.
Which, coming full circle, leads back to the idea of writing for pleasure, and writing sporadically when inspiration takes me. Without a clear topic to write about, and one that I want to write about, I have no desire to write. And currently, those topics are created through the combination of ideas. When I want to write, it’s often to give my forms thought and to better understand an idea by exploring my own mind through use of the written word. As such, for me, it’s almost a necessity to not pursue mastery in a single field, as that defeats the entire purpose of writing.
I would love to make writing into a career of sorts, but without the depth of expertise in a given field, building an audience will initially be difficult.
Fortunately, many of my interests do fall under a larger umbrella – self-improvement and psychology. Business and entrepreneurship, too. Within that umbrella is a whole host of sub-niches, many of which are big enough to be their own niches, that I have an interest in. This means I can treat my ‘mastery’ and field of depth as self-improvement/psychology and business/entrepreneurship while maintaining the polymath approach.
Next, I’d need to make myself write consistently, rather than only when inspired. This is doable, by making writing a habit.
A lot of the pleasure I get from writing is sharing what I already know. This is one approach. Instead of researching with the intention of using the knowledge to make a point before having decided that point, I could surround myself with learning for learning’s sake, go deep into the personal gratification of learning a subject, then wait for inspiration to strike. In other words, I could feed myself with so much knowledge that thoughts and ideas would be practically overflowing and begging to be given form through the written word.
My main resistance, I think, is to research. I’d no longer be learning for ‘fun’ or personal use, but rather to serve my writing and audience. I find ‘research’, in the academic sense, to be a bore. While at uni, I despised writing essays. Having to find information to make an argument, then making that argument, was tedious. While I see the use in it – it taught me how to make a written argument (only a little; I mostly learned how to do this myself) – the activity itself was not engaging or enjoyable to pursue. This is what I understand as ‘research’ – the pursuit of knowledge purely to prove a point. And this pursuit is not enjoyable unless I’ve decided the point I want made. There are two ways I can think of in which this would be the case:
- I want to write about a particular topic that I know little about, or
- I’m writing on something (after getting inspired) and need more information to develop the piece
Keeping this in mind will allow me to overcome the previous resistance to research and allow for a desire to learn as part of the writing process.
One obstacle when writing is distractions. I think it’s integral to minimise distractions so as not to disrupt the flow of work. It can be tricky to recover that state of automation after leaving the laptop. Particularly if you don’t have unfinished sections to explore. Yet at the same time, were I to be ‘distracted’ for long enough, the desire to return to a piece or to finish a piece is practically non-existent. No longer is writing about the enjoyment of the craft itself; it becomes a necessity, something I have to do rather than want to do – i.e. finishing the article. This is something I’m working on.
In some ways, this may be due to a fear of letting go. And that comes from a fear of change. Which is funny, because typically I like change, even seek it out. Even funnier is that I’ve been meditating for 5+ years, and the whole practice of meditation is in letting go of thoughts. Perhaps I’m enjoying writing the article so much, this state of Flow, that to finish the article would mean abandoning this pleasurable feeling. This seems to naturally lead to rambling, and that’s something I’m going to have to work on.
Of course, there are future articles to come, more writing to be done in the future, and I’ll be able to access this state again. But in the moment when writing, I’m not aware of that, even if the words being written now are automatic. And it’s the automaticity of it in which the problem lies. The pleasure of Flow, aside from the neurochemical cocktail that isn’t present at any other time, is the dissolution of ego. Your sense of self shuts down and you become one with the work. I’ll often use “you”, the second person, to convey ideas, likely as a result of detachment from self. At the same time, I’ll use “I” to refer to myself, but not consciously – it’s used more as an effective way to communicate ideas. I have been trying, throughout this piece and others, to switch more to a first-person approach than a second; I have no idea whether the ideas I’m communicating as “you” apply to “me” – but they apply to me, and I attempt to better communicate the idea and keep you engaged (with the added benefits of detaching from self or staying detached from my self) through using the second person.
I’m rambling again. Which is a problem in an age of short-form content (here we go again…). People’s attention spans are fucked. Social media, TikTok, short-form video, floods of advertising – it’s all damaging us. Fewer people are reading books. Films are starting to use over-stimulation tactics to maintain our attention – the same is also true for longer-form videos. I don’t use social media and actively avoid short-form content. I see this as a point of pride. Yet, it means I don’t personally understand the current state of how people engage with content. As a result, I create long-form content because I know it’s what would engage me, but the average TikTok-watching teenager would get bored by the first paragraph of this piece. The content is not stimulating or engaging enough for them, nor are the ideas themselves captivating enough to the average person to maintain attention throughout a piece. I’m working on learning these platforms and will hopefully eventually be creating content on these platforms to drive traffic to either this blog or my YouTube channel.
What I’m saying is, my rambling is something that needs dealing with to optimise for the success of my writing. Using white space and lots of line breaks, throwing in images and videos, is a good way of countering this. So is writing lots of articles rather than huge articles, then creating a web of links between posts. Not only is this good SEO practice, it’s also good UX – which could be why it’s good SEO practice.
Where do I go from here? I don’t know for certain. I think I’d like to begin making writing a habit. I’d like to create a proper website with an effective SEO and UX linking structure. I want to make this an actual business, with emails, affiliate links, marketing strategies, and more. I’ll also be growing a social following on my preferred platform, YouTube, which will work alongside this blog.
So, expect some changes, soon. The quality of writing will not degrade – in fact, it will likely improve, and so will the site. I’ll begin to provide more value to you, the reader. In return, I’ll have the fulfilment of satisfaction of building something by doing an activity I enjoy.
I’m excited for it. I hope you are too.