Mediocrity

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I've been writing daily for 658 days now. Here are some things I learned along the way.

Every idea is a good idea

This is most true at the start. Everything is worth writing about. The weird shadows in your room. The friendly postman you've recently met. The senselessness of life. Whatever, literally. You don't need to "find" inspiration. Open yourself to your world and you will be inspired.

Mediocrity is your friend

Not every post you write will be good. That doesn't necessarily mean they'll be bad, just mediocre. It's included in working publicly, writing daily. When you'll be looking back at previous posts, you'll see the ideas linger under the surface. But, maybe, you weren't able to find the right words at the time. Or the topic itself was just not rich enough to tell a story about it. And you wrote a mediocre post.

Every mediocre post is an opportunity to take another bite at presenting an idea. Don't be afraid to go back and re-visit old topics with new words.

There's no perfect writing app

It's easy to spend real money on fancy writing apps. I wrote 90% of posts right in Standard Notes, in the simplest HTML textarea, with no inline formatting. Working on your ideas, your language is a million times more important than finding the perfect writing app. Stick with the simplest. Notepad.exe will work perfectly.

"Delete" is an underrated tool

Once you get going on your writing journey, you'll notice that it's becoming easier and easier to write 200, 300, 500 words per day. Word count doesn't equal substance. Short is beautiful. Don't be afraid to cut down on noise.

An hour for reflection

When you finish writing your post, give yourself an hour. Go do something else; cook dinner, go for a run, knock down some emails. Then, go back to your post and read it in full. If it's all good, post it. If it's not, set a timer for three minutes and edit. No more than three minutes, daily writing needs a large percentage of spontaneity.

This might be hard if it's 10 minutes before midnight and you still haven't written your post. Trust me, I've been there :)

Nobody will care about your writing

Treat daily writing as if nobody but you cared about it. When you start writing for people, to show off, to impress, to reach, you'll loose motivation quickly. Write as if you were writing for the sake of writing itself. Nothing more.

No numbers

Use a platform that doesn't show you numbers. It will be much easier to write not knowing how many people are reading your work. This is ultimate confrontation of expression and the inner critic. For this reason I recommend Listed, the very platform this blog is built on.

Nothing bad happens if you slip. Just don't forget to get back up.

Good luck on your journey.