This has been pondered upon on this blog in the past, but never with a problem-solving angle. Always with the inward-facing analytic angle. Which is necessary and is a path of the journey that brings one to the thinking towards fixing issues. And I'm there now. Thankful for the travel, circuitous and scenic as it was, and glad to be here now.
What is happening in this blog, more recently but almost always is just self reflections. Not fully considered either, quick missives from my digits, to get the word-count out, to get the numbers filled. There has never been a pressure for me to actually think deep, consider alternatives and counterarguments for my proposals, for my ideas. This hasn't been a place for serious thinking, philosophizing and theorizing. It's been a place for glamorous self-reflection. therapy.
No problem there. Besides the content, the actual craft of writing hasn't observably improved in all these years. There's writing and there's typing, it wouldn't be too far left-field to say that what I do in this blog -- have been doing until now once the mass blogging began -- has been more on the writing side. The outcome has been that I can now write 3k words, possibly even 4k words an hour. But to what end? The pace is not of great importance after a point. It's the weight of the words, the twist of the phrase, the run of the sentence, dance of the paragraphs. The ability of words to make people imagine, wonder, cry, laugh etc is what gives power to them, it's why writing is such a crucial skill. It's looking like writing millions of words over the last four years hasn't helped improve those significantly.
If that is the case, how might I begin to change it? What would it look like to start writing, to actually think and ponder about the material that gets typed? The titles and topics themselves aren't important for now, we just want to put more gravitas to the pieces I have already decided on writing. How do I stop typing, start writing?
It would probably involve some degree of planning to start. I'd need to think about the general outline of a piece before I wrote it. For that I'd need to spend longer than 5 or seven minutes. Second, I'd have to re-read the piece at least once. That's to make sure that the idea has been represented as hoped in the initial planning. Some minor edits might be necessary, even if the end product doesn't end up anywhere.
These years have been amazing to get me started on the habit of sitting down, and using the keyboard to put words on the screen. Now I need to pilot a new practice, one that involves planning ahead, and rechecking the written word, and editing later on. Future reviews aren't necessary right away, but something worth considering for later. All of this means I'd need to significantly increase the time spent on these pieces. 20 minutes at least, 15 of those spent on writing, which means maybe 600-700 words. That's not been the goal in the past, but it needs to in the future. I need to understand that the future lies in growth, in self improvement, in evaluating and re-evaluating one's output.
Change must come. This is a training not just to improve as a person, but to improve presenting myself to the rest of the world. The work ethic that will come with this new editorial instinct will be valuable for me in other aspects of my life too.
I'm looking forward to becoming a harder-working, deeper-thinking, seriously-considering version of me. It will take more effort and deeper concentration, but I have time.