Write More to Write More

I was having a conversation with someone today about writing, and about my own daily writing practice. I’d published things here and there over the years, but it was only this year that I started to publish regularly; that it started to feel weird not to publish regularly—or at least to write.

This might seem obvious once I state it, but it hadn’t yet dawned on me that my ability to write publicly every day arrived the same year that I started to write privately every day (via morning pages).

I claimed that I don’t keep a backlog of posts, but in reality that’s only a half-truth. I journal 750 words every single morning—inevitably I end up publishing something that began as a small thought in those pages.

I wondered for years how I might develop a writing practice. I’d put pressure on myself to first come up with good ideas, but sitting down to “think of good ideas” is harder than it sounds. It turns out the solution was simple and sounds silly: to write more I just had to write more.

When I sit down with my journal every morning, I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to write about—I just start writing. When I sit down to write my daily blog post, I… mostly same, to be honest—but I do have lots of thoughts rattling around in my head, and a few come into focus.

Annoyingly, I find that’s how most things work. The “one weird trick” to doing the thing is simply to do the thing, which makes you more likely to do the thing again, which… (you get the picture). Since I started making daily art, I started making more art period, and so it goes.

I sincerely doubt that I’d be sat here writing this post if I hadn’t first committed to writing morning pages (and finally sticking with it). I simply wouldn’t have built the muscle to write for myself, nor the confidence to just write about anything vs. some elusive “good idea.”

If you’re struggling to do the thing, do the thing. More practically, if you’re struggling to write something and share it with the world, start by writing something—really, anything—for an audience of one: you.