Perhaps the way to regular newspaper writing lies in project phoenix and planning?

I will have written very close to 32 essays in about a month of time, and yes a lot of will have been assisted writing but I damn near wrote the word equivalent of all those essays, just didn't organize it too well. That's not even the end of it, I'll have written perhaps 25-30 'proposals' that go on for 1000-1500 words each too, which makes the writing that's been done this month...Intense. And serious. The quality of my written work hasn't gone up considerably, I'm no more of a creative and entertaining writer than I was a month ago, but it does feel like I'm significantly better at the mechanical, manual task of getting points across, getting the process of 'pen on paper' done more efficiently. Whether that is actually good for creativity, who even knows but at this point that's a bird far off, we're hoping for productivity, the good stuff will come when she wishes to.

What I have successfully done this month is made a habit out of topic-writing (coming up with ideas to write on, a hard task I've not yet mastered for this blog unfortunately), planning out a piece of writing...again something I was quite bad at forever but it turns out my skills and interests are aligning there and I've come to the realization that while planning shit out might take longer than writing the essay preemptively, it saves so much time and one can avoid 'writers block' because planning and writing are two separate modes of creation and it's much easier than to write, and to expand on planned points to an essay than write from scratch. The third thing I've learned is to 'fill things out', which is to expand upon a topic and the various ways it can be approached. Much thanks goes to Ai models for assisting with that, but I've realized that essays are rarely ever thought of and written down in a single 2-hour setting and they need to be 'chewed through' and digested in the various parts of your creative system until they are finally digested enough to uhhh poop out the words, I guess... You get the point, one must sit on one's thoughts and this month has taught me the value of doing that and the skills in achieving it.

Another point is I have realized the importance of writing seriously and for other people instead of entertaining myself or keeping my shit together. Writing can be used to communicate my ideas and influence people, and it can help me establish a 'personal brand'. My plan is to create a strong online presence on the strength of my thoughts and since I can't you know mind-communicate, words will need to be my medium.

I have wanted to write for newspapers as a regular columnist since 2010, but that has not worked out because for me inspiration came in 'fits and bursts', which meant the discipline and motive to actually be invested in the craft of writing wasn't there. I was an artist, not a craftsman, I didn't have the maturity to follow through. But now the discovery that if this painful crappy hard-assed way is the way to get one used to writing, so be it, it's less than ideal and in a dream world the ideas would come to me like magic I'd love jotting them down and we'd all by happy, but that's not how the world works. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

So then: how does one go about writing consistently for newspapers? This is what identified: think of a topic (or five or twenty), write general summaries for all of them in one go, the gist theme and conclusion, then go back to each and keep expanding and expanding all the points, and then eventually bind the points in a light structure. Eventually the rough work for each essay will be so large, it'll be impossible to avoid writing it, as the material will be longer than the essays themselves. At this point I'd use assisted tools, or just sheer willpower to turn that content into well-organized essays, maintain a portfolio of them, and eventually send them out to the newspapers. Because, why not?

And thus begins the real journey!