What I think about writing when I'm not writing
My first listicle of 10 reflections after almost two years of writing regularly
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Happy New Year to you! Thanks for staying with me and reading this newsletter.
As the new year dawned, I found myself reflecting on the Performonks journey. Between May 2020 and Dec 2021, I hit publish on 74,000 words. I wrote and did not publish maybe as many words. So I thought for the first edition of 2022, I would write an introspective on writing.
When we write, we often don't end up where we began. So I started with an essay but ended up with a listicle. I had once promised myself I would never stoop to low-brow writing like listicles! But as they say, never say never.
Here are 10 things I think about writing when I’m not writing.
1. When in doubt, choose discomfort.
When I built my website, Performonks, I agitated for weeks about whether to start a newsletter. My comfort zone was to slip into procrastination mode and blame the ‘busyness’ of my day job for not writing regularly.
I am glad I picked the discomfort zone. That it has kept me disciplined to publish at a regular cadence is a big win in itself. This consistency continues to compound and enrich me.
2. Internal report card.
David Brooks, in his excellent book, The Road to Character, talks about people who have made indelible contributions to society. He says their internal moral compass guided them. External report cards (promotion, money, a bigger house, fancier car, etc.) tickle the ego and dial up our dopamine. Sooner or later, they are rudely taken away or worse, our joy from them hits a ceiling.
When one has worked in a corporate job as long as I have, one gets used to living to an external drumbeat. Our day hums to a cadence of corporate rituals - calendars, conferences, and year-end appraisals.
However, pursuing a personal passion has moved the responsibility within.
Only I am responsible for how often I write and what I write about, and only I am the judge of its quality. This is both terrifying and liberating. I highly recommend you try to create something for yourself and by yourself. You will experience the empowerment that comes with living with an internal compass.
3. Writing has made me more present in the present moment.
Consuming knowledge without internalizing it is like cooking and then dumping the entire saucepan into the dustbin. Now, when I read, listen to podcasts, or am in a conversation, my mind is on high alert to pick up an interesting turn of phrase, a fresh point of view, or an idea I could write about.
4. Rituals create flow.
I read obsessively about writing routines of famous writers and dream of being like them.
While I know I will never be as prolific or as great a writer, I have taken half a baby step towards developing a writing flow state. I have learnt that we can train our body and mind to enter high-performance states through a rhythm of routines and rituals. I write most nights right after dinner. I look forward to this time of solitude. The soft glow of the table lamp in a dark room, the same playlist on loop, autofill passwords into WordPress and Substack, and maybe a cup of green tea. The minute I settle into this space, my body relaxes, and my brain becomes alert.
Some writing sessions are good—I wrote an EBook on Brand Differentiation over two days and one night. Some sessions are not, and I have learnt to be okay with that. I know consistency leads to results… even if in a trickle.
5. I write to learn what I know… and to rediscover what I have forgotten.
I often don't know what I want to say until I start writing.
I have a topic I want to research, and that takes me down a rabbit hole of articles, books, podcasts, blogs and news. All of a sudden, I get an idea spark and I start writing. All the random pieces of information magically start to connect and percolate through my fingertips onto the screen.
The idea begs to be told and I feverishly try to capture it, afraid it would fly away! If I did not write, I would not know what I think, and all the reading and lived experiences would not crystallize into knowledge.
So inherently, writing becomes a selfish pursuit. But I digress…
The sketch below tries to capture this synthesis.
6. I discovered that writing and drawing go hand in hand.
I find myself sketching out concepts I write about.
Visuals convey an idea within 2 seconds to an attention-deficit world. This is a good discovery, and I hope to hone this more. I take inspiration from Jack Butcher, a master in synthesizing complex ideas into simple visuals, and Tim Urban, who literally draws what he writes in a comic style.
7. Gratitude. I stand on the shoulders of giants.
The title of this newsletter is a shameless lift from Murakami’s book, “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”. Which itself is inspired by the title of a short story collection by Raymond Carver, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”.
The more I write, the more I bow with gratitude to those I learn from. Humanity together is weaving a collective latticework of ideas. If we worked alone and started from scratch each time, we would all still be sitting around a fire, sharpening our flint stone spears. All I do is synthesize the vast knowledge that already exists and maybe add my paltry 0.5 cents on top of it.
Thinkers I look up to, learn so much from, and want to be like… Scott Galloway, Fareed Zakaria, Tim Ferris, David Perell, Julian Shapiro, Tim Urban, Andrew Chen, Shane Parrish, Mark Ritson, Amit Varma, Elizabeth Gilbert, Rick Jarow, Eckhart Tolle…and so many more. Thank You.
[Note: I am not unaware that all but one of the men on this list are men, but that might be fodder for another post… or therapy]
8. Connecting dots.
What are my 0.5 cents? I connect dots, visualize concepts, and find the connective tissue between personal and professional mastery.
I connect multiple disciplines to form new ideas and sprinkle the newsletter with examples to bring the ideas alive. The more I write, the more I realize that the concepts we use to build our brands and businesses can also be applied to self-development. So, I try to link personal and professional mastery.
9. Ups and downs.
I spoke earlier about the discomfort zone. Each newsletter experiences a roller coaster of ups and downs before it is published.
After a period of laziness and procrastination, I start researching and lose steam in the middle when I overwhelm myself with too much reading and too many loose idea threads.
Without fail, each time I publish, I feel paralyzed by fear of judgement and imposter syndrome. I know many people don't read each newsletter. But there are always 4-5 people that write in the next morning to give feedback and share what they liked. Not wanting to disappoint them keeps me going.
10. Iteration and editing.
We can’t iterate and edit out those moments from our lives when we have not been our best selves. But writing allows us to do just that. Hemingway believed one must write drunk and edit sober. While I don’t write drunk, the part I enjoy most about writing is the editing.
If I did not have a deadline, I would keep editing endlessly.
I struggle with the first draft, and it takes longer than I should. I think it’s because I am still trying to discover my voice.
While I know it is the iterations that polish the writing, shed extra words and add mindfulness to the ideas, and that won't go away, as I keep writing, I hope to get my first draft out from a stream of consciousness and draw more and more from my own experiences.
As I wish you a happy new year, I want to remind you of this.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson