Write to discover your thoughts.
I am often asked what my processes/systems/habits for writing daily are, most recently by Rick Carabba of Brainbank, so this is for you, Rick, as my reply explained that, well, I don’t know what my process is, as per this email reply:
When I started writing daily, I remembered the concept that it takes 30 days to start a habit… by the time I got to 100 days in a row, when people asked me how I do it, I simply said “I’m a writer, I write”. Over 1300 days in a row now.. so any process I have I am “Unconsciously Competent” about…. What I would note is that I publish every day, but almost always write at least one day ahead… and about once a week I do write 2 to 3 pieces in flow.
However, almost no sooner than I penned that reply, I read a newsletter that had a section within it that leapt out at me and totally explained my process!
Late in 2020, I met (on Twitter, for now) Remi Guyot, who thanked me for my writing (all writers, creators, artists love acknowledgment and feedback, I definitely do, thanks in advance for yours 😉 ! ). Remi has now been writing his own regular posts and I love his deep thoughts on various topics. Last week his newsletter was called: “Writing Is Like An Exoskeleton For The Brain“. To begin, he used two movies to explain what exoskeletons may become for humans for our muscular body (love both the movies he referenced!), then went on to talk about his topic. A great piece of writing and the section that leaped out for me was this:
Writing to discover your thoughts
Expert writers don’t try to put their thoughts in writing. It’s the opposite that happens. They discover what their thoughts could be by writing. Now, it’s not a mystical phenomenon — those thoughts are already somewhere in you. But you are unable to think about them or to formulate them, without going through the writing step.
It’s a funny phenomenon to experience. You pay attention to something that strikes you as interesting, you try to put into words this vague impression you have, and you find yourself unfolding, word after word, an observation that is much richer than the initial insight that got you started.
After going down that path again and again, and seeing how what you ended up writing is systematically better than what you wanted to write about, you get into the habit of writing, just to know what you are thinking.
Remi Guyot
Yes! This is indeed my process, at least the majority of my time. I listen to people, I read, I have ideas. I then make a note of them, then when I sit down to write each day, the majority of my posts then emerge from my hands being at the keyboard.
Now, Remi talks about a total of eight ways of writing. I in fact use all of them, simply that my core process when writing daily is to write to discover my thoughts.
Remi, I believe this is a TED talk and a book, I look forward to watching and then reading. I know you can distil the ideas first into no more than three themes (for the TED talk), then expand each of the eight ideas into lots of micro-chapters, perhaps each with a story and a writing exercise. Hmm, would love to support you in any way in this, your piece has inspired so much thought in me.. and just look at this, I didn’t have any of this last paragraph in mind when I sat down at the keyboard, I only discovered these final thoughts as I wrote!