You Can Just Write Stuff

Writing online is part art, part science.

The art of it is obvious--you want to bring your own perspective and creative style to the things you write, which make it uniquely your own and draws certain people to you.

But the science part is a different story, and it's a part of online writing that has always frustrated me.

If you're on Twitter (X, I know) or LinkedIn these days, it seems like every other post is someone teaching you "how to write". There's been a renewed interest in the principles behind good writing in the last few years. People like David Perell, Dickie Bush, and Nicolas Cole have all seen great success teaching people how to write online, as more people reawaken to the fact that good writing matters, for both your personal and professional life.

I've been a student of all of three of these guy's work in one way or another, and I've become a better writer because of it.

But it's also caused me to get a lot more in my head about writing, and if anything has made me write less. For a while, I would agonize over whether or not my headlines were engaging enough, if I was using too many words, or whether or not my "hook" was good enough to capture the reader's attention.

I looked at everything I wrote, whether on blogs, newsletters, Twitter, or LinkedIn, through this lens, and I hated it. What I realize now is that trying to apply these rules and strategies to my writing was taking all of the fun and spontaneity out of it. I was trying to write in a way that I thought would be the most optimized, the most engaging, and not in a way that felt creative and natural.

In other words, I was all science and no art.

So in my attempt to get back into writing regularly, I now only have one rule for myself: just write stuff.

And since I started following this rule, I've been having a lot more fun. Whereas before on a platform like Twitter I would labor over the construction of a thread for upwards of an hour, now I just post shit. I don't think twice about the structure, or whether or not it would be better as a thread or single tweet. When I have an idea I find interesting, or a conversation I want to spark, I just throw it out there.

The same thing goes for this blog. I don't have a list of ideas or a niche I want to get into, I just sit down and write whatever is top of mind. And it's fun. I find ideas flow more naturally and it allows me to more easily go down paths I didn't even know that I found interesting.

You can just write stuff, and that's what I'll be doing for a while.