I'm reminded of The Inner Game of Tennis, where tennis students perform better when they're just kind of following their intuition and body rather than over-analyzing each swing. We already know how to communicate, we do it all the time! That's a v empowering framing for writing
Hey Sasha, thanks for writing this. Your post especially the first two paragraphs help me be the most consistent in my writing ever.
I have blogged badly and inconsistently. I now have published 30 posts in 30 days by using your advice, scheduled posts, lowering my (perceived) quality bar, and writing selfishly just for myself.
NO response needed. Just to convey my thanks is all.
total sucker for this advice as i once wrote a weekly humour column around a day job (ya big deal right?!) and seeing how it was northern vermont and decades ago i just whipped up crazy thoughts fast and took another 15 mins. to edit (my fav. part) and always with longer writing ie emails i tend towards the stream of consciousness mode i so admired in Wolfe (Thomas) or Dos Passos or Kesey but in my hands comes out as sort of unpunctuated wanton laziness with plenty of crying out for approbation/attention.....but YES writing faster removes the ego enough from the equation sometimes enough to let the pieces of our unique minds to fall into place (see editing above ha!) in a genuine way and lets face it we ALL can smell a rat....a poseur... a fake......getting back to the lover analogy when that starts happening , the lack of trust which taints genuine with neediness its basically: "Here is Where I Leave You" time......i havent seen the film but love the title
“We all know that we're most charming when we’re least inhibited—usually when we have a trusted audience, a friend or lover who we’re not worried about impressing with our wisdom.” Yes! And so I always imagine I’m writing for the people I know love me and already find me charming. Including myself! Haha! But really.
I think this is generally good advice, but what if the thing you are writing about is so complex that you aren’t sure how to make sense of it yet? It seems to me there ought to be a difference between general reporting — “here’s what happened to me” — and the more tangled work of, “holy shit, what happened, why did I do that, why do we do that?”
But maybe that’s the more invisible work of being a writer — is thinking and parsing your thoughts.
this is a great question! for me, when i'm confused, writing fast still works best, it just looks like iterating into the fog, getting it wrong six times really fast and then stumbling on something that feels true, etc
I'm reminded of The Inner Game of Tennis, where tennis students perform better when they're just kind of following their intuition and body rather than over-analyzing each swing. We already know how to communicate, we do it all the time! That's a v empowering framing for writing
Hey Sasha, thanks for writing this. Your post especially the first two paragraphs help me be the most consistent in my writing ever.
I have blogged badly and inconsistently. I now have published 30 posts in 30 days by using your advice, scheduled posts, lowering my (perceived) quality bar, and writing selfishly just for myself.
NO response needed. Just to convey my thanks is all.
This post gave me a burst of renewed energy. Really looking forward to trying it out on my next article!
So glad, send it to me when it’s up!
Here it is! https://open.substack.com/pub/samanthahoover/p/take-a-bit-of-time-to-daydream?r=o868w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thank you for the advice!
I agree with this post
total sucker for this advice as i once wrote a weekly humour column around a day job (ya big deal right?!) and seeing how it was northern vermont and decades ago i just whipped up crazy thoughts fast and took another 15 mins. to edit (my fav. part) and always with longer writing ie emails i tend towards the stream of consciousness mode i so admired in Wolfe (Thomas) or Dos Passos or Kesey but in my hands comes out as sort of unpunctuated wanton laziness with plenty of crying out for approbation/attention.....but YES writing faster removes the ego enough from the equation sometimes enough to let the pieces of our unique minds to fall into place (see editing above ha!) in a genuine way and lets face it we ALL can smell a rat....a poseur... a fake......getting back to the lover analogy when that starts happening , the lack of trust which taints genuine with neediness its basically: "Here is Where I Leave You" time......i havent seen the film but love the title
This is beautiful! It reaffirms what I have found about myself and makes me feel less alone in the grand scheme of writing.
good stuff
I love this essay, but it deeply pisses me off that you wrote it in 25 minutes and edited it in 5.
“We all know that we're most charming when we’re least inhibited—usually when we have a trusted audience, a friend or lover who we’re not worried about impressing with our wisdom.” Yes! And so I always imagine I’m writing for the people I know love me and already find me charming. Including myself! Haha! But really.
I think this is generally good advice, but what if the thing you are writing about is so complex that you aren’t sure how to make sense of it yet? It seems to me there ought to be a difference between general reporting — “here’s what happened to me” — and the more tangled work of, “holy shit, what happened, why did I do that, why do we do that?”
But maybe that’s the more invisible work of being a writer — is thinking and parsing your thoughts.
this is a great question! for me, when i'm confused, writing fast still works best, it just looks like iterating into the fog, getting it wrong six times really fast and then stumbling on something that feels true, etc
Ah, makes sense!! Thanks for clarifying :))