How I'll improve my writing process
v1.
welp it’s 11:09PM on a Thursday — I told myself, more importantly I told Jalesa, that I would publish every Thursday for the foreseeable future. Somehow Thursday just popped up on me without letting me know it was on the way, just walked right into my house and sat on my couch and kicked up its feet. Zero invitation.
So, in order to make this happen for this to actually be something good I have to find a rhythm, a process; watch a bunch of YouTube videos about the writing process; oh, and read a ton of Substack articles about writing good Substack articles and how to make millions writing on Substack.
haha, I write that in jest but I can for sure see myself doing just that. But this time I will not be partaking in that endless rabbit hole of placebo productivity — all the feels, none of the actual benefits. As I mentioned before, I will become a better writer.
So, words without action — that’s how I got here, writing a post at 11:24 PM instead of getting my much-needed sleep. Won’t happen again next week. Next week I will have a good article written by Wednesday night and scheduled for release Thursday morning. And how will I go about that?
Good question, extremely exhausted John.
Keep the tools simple — during this next two-week phase, I will use two primary tools for creating what I publish here. First, one of the greatest inventions ever created by humanity, a true marvel: a notebook and pen. Second, sublime.app — I’ve been saying for a good year now it’s an app most people should be using, but honestly it’s become a digital hoarding place for me. I will change that, as I genuinely believe it’s a great example of human-first software, which I hope it stays. And I know how difficult that is.
30 minutes every day — writing something out with the intent to publish. I write daily, but most of that writing is free-flowing, meant as an exhale onto the
page. Sometimes there’s usable stuff there, but more often than not it’s a release of mental clutter.
Pitch Jalesa no later than Monday. See, benefit of being married: I have a built-in editor-in-chief who will give me a look — which will bring shame on our descendants for several generations if Thursday comes and I’m staying up till 11:37 writing a last-minute article just so I can hold myself to words only I directly care about.
welp, that’s it. Going to start with just these three and see if something comes out of it. Also going to limit my direct Substack time to printing out the pieces I want to read. Because the scroll is dangerous.
As always, thank you for reading.
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