lessons from consistent writing
I used to avoid writing consistently because I was afraid I would exhaust all my ideas. Who the hell has something to say every time? Through the act, though, I’ve learned a few (surprising) things along the way:
Ideas are rarely born in isolation
I’m an avid believer that writing doesn’t conjure ideas out of thin air. Ideas are amalgamations: collages adapted from scattered, preexisting fragments you already carry within you. It might sound strange articulating what I mean, but when I write consistently I begin to notice patterns, threads. “Oh, here’s this average Idea A, and over there is unremarkable Idea B. Can I connect them?” On their own, they feel incomplete, but when placed together? Suddenly, Idea A + B becomes something larger than either was alone.
The more I write, the easier it becomes to think
In the mind, thoughts are abstract; blurred at the edges, emotionally charged yet intellectually vague. The moment I force my thoughts to crystallize, instead of ricocheting in my head half-formed and evasive, they have to commit. A sentence has to choose a direction. Writing demands specificity, and specificity disciplines thought.
When I stop writing, I stop speaking
I had a faulty supposition that the written word and its verbal counterpart were mutually exclusive, that proficiency in one had little relevance with the other. My introverted nature renders me a below-average speaker (e.g. lengthy pauses, too much second-guessing, losing my train of thought mid-sentence). Yet since running Bear, I’ve come to realize that writing surprisingly compensates for that. The more I write, the more fluidly my words surface in conversation, a rehearsal for speech. When I abandon writing, my voice recedes with it.
I think that’s the real secret of regular writing. It’s not always about sharing profound ideas, but about sitting with yourself long enough to discover what you’ve already been thinking.