Writing reps
If you’re not practicing something with regularity, like a few times a week, your ability will start to ebb rather than flow. Too much ebbing means any flow will start to dry up, parched of life, before it disappears for good. It takes will and effort to build a strong habit, but the more you practice the easier it becomes.
I’ve noticed this to some extent with writing. I find it a little easier these days, although I’m still not doing enough of it to build the creative muscles that make it truly flow when I sit down at my laptop. I’m seeing the effect more with photography. I’m doing a lot more photography than writing, and I enjoy it more than I do writing, which only adds to my appetite for doing it often. It’s a virtuous reinforcement loop, and the result is I find things flow much more naturally for me when out with my camera these days.
One thing I’ve learned from photography that I struggle to apply to my writing is the acceptance of weak work. I’ve taken what I consider to be some reasonably good photos over the last couple of years, but the vast majority of what I take is mediocre at best. Some of it is literally dreadful, yet I’ve accepted this as being part of the process – something I’ve struggled to do with my writing. I should really have dozens of unpublished blog posts and essays hanging around, but I have relatively few. This is because I’m not writing often enough and, hence, I’m not failing enough. Instead I just fall at the first hurdle and never produce the blog posts in the first place.
What this means is that that my progress to becoming a better writer is slow. Dreadfully so. I’m not putting in enough reps, so I’m not making enough mistakes, which means I’m not developing my writing muscles or learning enough about how to get better. I’ve seen with my photography that regular practice, reps, failures and lessons learned can result in relatively rapid advancement – I just need to apply this formula to writing.
To become a better writer you need to write frequently, a few times a week. Just write stuff, crank it out, and finish it. If it’s not great, that’s fine – it’s part of the process. Keep it, but only publish the “good enough” stuff. Not everything has to be, or even can be, a banger. This post is far from banger material, but I think it’s probably good enough to be shared. So here it is, all 464 words of average. It won’t change the world, but it leaves me feel pretty good having done my writing reps for the day.
Same again tomorrow?
