I use to think one needed to be to be an expert of writing to write/publish something. This initially prevented me from writing, for fear that I would get called out. I thought my lack of experience was as obvious as a mole on someone’s face. In retrospect I realize how dumb that thought is. Anyone who wants to write can and should write.

Writing is a gift everyone should experience. Something I realize more and more as I get older is how overrated the concept of an expert is. How did that “expert” get started? One can never do well at something they never start. Writing, like many things I aspire to improve on is an iterative process. Start with a turd and work way up, adding polish with newly learned skills. Mythbusters confirmed that a turd can indeed be polished. Granted, a polished turd is a still a turd but it looks better than it started and that a the goal. Odds are its not even as bad as first thought. We have a tendency to be our own worst critic. Many times I’ve read comments where the following disclaimer is appended “sorry for bad English” and most of the time the English is better than what native speakers write.

I’ve lead the entire post with this explanation because my “how to write” is simple and underwhelming : just write. I consider this advice to fall under the simple but not easy category. The concept is simple, but actually doing it is not easy. It’s difficult because we get into our own head to much. We start thinking about how it will be received even before we write a single line. We get discouraged because we’re not good or an expert. Again, an expert started getting better the same way that anyone get better: starting. Just writing isn’t enough though. Writing frequently is more important. This is one of those cases where quantity is better than quality because ones writing becomes better the more they do it. Quantity results in quality. It also helps to read good writing. I’ve been on and off an information diet, but I’ve found that reading other people’s work has introduces many different words and styles that I can adopt as I find my “true voice”, whatever that means. The whole information diet thing has to do with not being overwhelmed by all that exists on the internet. It’s about selectively reading some content and ignoring others. There is only so much content that we can consume in a given day. Of that content there is only so much that can actually sink in.

Being selective is important to being able to focus and excel at one thing at a time.(Note: I have not mastered this by any means, but I’m working on it) In the past, it’s how I got burnt out on web development. Researching new tools/techniques everyday consumed my life. In the end I was left more confused then when I started. My temptation for learning new things is strong, but I have to realize that learning is a process. Learning also requires persistence and that’s where habits come in. I’m not nearly as consistent as I want to be with writing but I’m always writing tidbits. Whether is a new title for a blog post or a subject I want to talk about, I usually write something – anything in my google keep app. Then I’ll revisit it and develop the idea or sometimes write the whole post. There are some full written blog posts that I haven’t put up because it’s an unpolished turd. I should probably still put them out, but as anyone could see I still struggle with the concept of not being good enough. That’s another blog post on its own but at least I made this one. I gotta take a win wherever I can find it haha!