How And Why You Should Fall In Love With The Process Of Writing
It is all in the doing not the result
I am in New York. My favourite city. It’s spring, warm, blue. Lockdown feels like it happened somewhere else. In another life. The mood is electric and I’m sitting in a coffee shop on the lower east side, it’s early evening and I’ve just sat down to write.
Having no idea what I was going to write about until I fired up my laptop, for the first time in months I caught myself smiling. Smiling because I’m sitting in New York writing about being in New York. I get to do that because I write every day and that’s a beautiful thing. An earned thing.
Maybe it’s the atmosphere, perhaps it’s because I‘m away but I’ve turned a corner and today I am in love with the process of writing. Just for today, I am not fussed about the stats, nor whether or not this post will succeed financially. I just want to write.
How did I get here?
Slowly. I am in no way shape or form a master of this online writing thing but I am a master of my own process which is to write and publish every day. I get to execute and I get to improve. Slowly.
For me, it’s the only way.
The only way I will ever be able to get good at this. Daily and only daily. If I skip a day I will skip a month. A year. A life. No joke.
I don’t have the discipline to only do this sometimes. I’m not that guy. It’s all or nothing.
They say we can get used to anything if we do it enough and I agree. It’s a habit I don’t even think about anymore. I just find some time, fire up my laptop and get on with it.
What else Is good about it?
Tonnes. You get to think. You get to inform. You also get to reach people and build a platform of influence. However slowly. Even someone like me with bad grades and big ideas says something worthwhile now and again. People have told me so anyway.
Why should you do it?
A billion reasons. You can get paid. You get to play with words and ideas and flow states. You get to sit down on spring evenings and be a writer. You can get so good that you surprise all of those people who had different ideas about you. For you. You get to surprise yourself.
How to fall in love with the process?
Just like anything. Do it. Do it as much as you can. Do it so it becomes a fixture of your life and do it so much that not doing it feels weird. It is the same as anything. Running, the gym, meditating. One day doesn’t matter, but a hundred days gets you a habit. Make sure it's a good habit.
Today I am in the love with the process but not every day. No one is that lucky. A lot of the time I would rather be lazy and read the news on my phone or watch shows. I still do those things but I don’t let those things stop me from writing. If I did let them stop me, then I would never get to be here, in a cool place writing about cool shit.
