#62 writing is a muscle

process + practice = result

Taylor Swift’s advice to Gracie Abrams on writing her upcoming album was to write every day. Without meaning to, I’ve been taking this advice for the last decade of my life. Only a small fraction of what I write ends up online, but I write at least a little bit every single day.

Ever since I was a child I’ve had bursts of inspiration during the day - in the shower, on public transport, in the middle of a riveting book. Sentences form in my mind and then whole paragraphs. I have no choice but to capture them like butterflies and fiendishly document them in my notes app.

How much you write is also a direct result of how much you consume, so I keep myself heavily inspired. Last week someone said that reading and writing are synonymous - reading is breathing in and writing is breathing out. I’m obsessed with this way of looking at it.

My brain swallows entire books, I’m constantly guilty of diving down TikTok theory rabbit holes, I spend every single subway ride reading through the email deliveries of the various Substack subscriptions I’m signed up for, and I can’t clean my apartment unless I’ve hit play on a podcast episode.

I want to be smarter, perennially curious to engage with my niche obsessions in all the free time I can afford for them. I love to win an argument with optimum use of fact driven sarcasm - isn’t that victory so much sweeter? Right now, I’m interested in feminism, investing and entrepreneurship. Every weekend, P and I get on an hour long phone call to discuss what we’ve learnt that past week. Almost always, this inspires my own writing and worldview for the better.

As a lifelong introvert, writing has been my outlet. I’ve been doing it for so long I almost find it necessary, like brushing your teeth. It’s given me the perfect stage as a person who hates being the center of attention but wants desperately to be understood and to understand. It feeds my soul, it always has. I can almost always find a way to dissect a problem, to write myself out of a tough spot, to process heartbreak, to store away memories that would otherwise weigh me down if I carried them around. It’s loud and tangled in my brain, and the words are where I take the knots until they’re all laid out in straight, neat, entertaining sentences.

My process is not glamorous, but it works. I usually write from my big white desk by my apartment windows, floor drenched in sunlight on Sunday afternoons. There are always TJ Maxx candles and an iced coffee to keep me fueled. I spend hours there, working my mind, formulating a 1000 word opinion or story for whoever wants it. I use my laptop, preferring to type so edits are instant and clean. I need the same song on loop, something I’m familiar with.

When I come to the page, I still struggle with vulnerability, always stuck mid metaphor - is this veering on saying too much, did I get too personal? Then I chuckle, remembering the Didion quote that goes, in writing, waste no bullets. My favorite writing has always been women saying too much, the mirror of their words held up onto my own enormous emotions. Good written word should be terrifying and honest and jarring.

I think I’ve mostly liked to keep my work non-commercial. That way there’s no pressure to publish on a schedule, no frenzied editor waiting for a good enough draft. My full autonomy over my craft brings me a sense of peace to go at my own pace. Still, I have periods of searing doubt.

Despite having more than 700 organically grown subscribers to a long form essay newsletter in a world of shortening attention spans and the popularity of byte sized content, I still feel the need to prove something I haven’t yet. I still feel like my life is too barricaded from new experiences, I’m not being jolted quite as often. I have big ambitions for my writing but I’m terrified to pursue them. I should write a book. I should market my work better. I should try to get an essay published by a proper publication. I should participate in writing competitions. I keep these goals in my mind, but maybe the right time to start is right now.

When I was younger I tried to convince my mother to let me get a degree in English literature, but she forbade me. In a way she was right - I’ve never needed a degree, and I’ve never written because someone asked me to. This Substack is free so I’m not even in it for the money. I write because I really love it, because the world makes more sense when I do. I write because writing more means writing better, the same way focusing on working a group of muscles consistently is the only way to make them grow stronger.

Just like Didion’s solid advice, there is lots more widespread online wisdom on why and how to write. Among my favorites, jumping out from my mental library right now, is the Cheryl Strayed Dear Sugar column titled Write Like A Motherfucker and its golden articulation -

“How many women wrote beautiful novels and stories and poems and essays and plays and scripts and songs in spite of all the crap they endured. How many of them didn’t collapse in a heap of “I could have been better than this” and instead went right ahead and became better than anyone would have predicted or allowed them to be. The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It’s strength. It’s nerve. And “if your Nerve, deny you –,” as Emily Dickinson wrote, “go above your Nerve.” Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.”

For the rest of the year, I’m committing to showing up with a shovel for the mines of my own heart. It will be scary as it always is, but what other way is there to live? Sometimes you’ve just got to do it fucking terrified, and you’ll be surprised at how your own stories and perceptions change as you face your fears.