About a month ago I had a touch of writer’s block. I reached out to The Wolffe and he gave me a few helpful suggestions - none of which I’ve actually used…until today! One of them was “How you write regularly - why do you do it? What’s fun/hard/bad about it?”
Why do you do it? I’ve been asked some variant of this question a handful of times in the past - “Why do you do igotw? What’s it for?” This question is closely akin to nerd-sniping in that every time I’m asked I end up down a rabbithole thinking about it. (I was once told “Maybe over-thinking things is your su perpower.”) I mean, why does anyone do anything, really? Gym rats work out every day. Runners run. I do this.
I think to a certain extent I have Mr. Kerwin to thank, and more recently Seth Godin. I admire Godin - the dude has his head on pretty straight (for a Marketing Guy) - and he writes a lot about persistence. He doesn’t just write about it, he walks the walk. Duder has been posting at least once a day for something like 15 years now. That’s fucking incredible to me. I want to be like that.
What’s “fun” about it? Y’mean besides the money and the fame? Frankly, almost nothing - at least not for any commonly-accepted definition of “fun”. I’ll admit to a certain smug satisfaction being able to say “Y’know, there’s an igotw about that” about any given topic. I also love it when a post gets commented on or prompts a discussion…but that almost never happens. And that’s okay! There’s a fundamental difference here between what’s “fun” and what’s personally satisfying. Twenty years ago I didn’t understand what “one must imagine Sisyphus happy” meant. Now I think I’m starting to get a glimpse of what Camus was talking about.
What’s “hard” about it? In a word: “it”. Writing. Is. Hard. On rare occasions it just “flows” (or I’m doing a UA post) and I knock it out in 45 minutes. I don’t have hard data, but anecdotally I’d say the majority of posts take something like 3 or 4 hours of writing - and re-writing - ad nauseam. I’m decidedly not a professional writer, but if I were going to give advice to someone wanting to write I’d suggest a rule of thumb something like “if you’re not completely sick of it before you ship it then you probably haven’t spent enough time editing.” Perfect is the enemy of good, but a little due diligence is in order before you just yeet something out into the world, eh? (Also: can someone significantly younger than I am verify whether I’ve used “yeet” correctly here?)
What’s “bad” about it? Confluence. I started off using Confluence because it was the available platform, it’s ubiquitous/familiar to folks, and at least nominally has a “blog” feature. I suppose it’s “good enough”, but man do I ever have a list of grievances. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally created a “Page” instead of a “Blog”, one time it somehow defaulted to creating the post under someone else’s “Space” (?!)…the “blog” functionality is just kinda bolted onto the wiki, and it really shows if you try and use it long enough. That said, there aren’t really any acceptable alternatives for internal posts. I’ve considered “rolling my own”, but I need another piece of tech infra that I have to support like I need another hole in my head. Ah, well.
Anyhow…I’ve probably said enough, so I’ll leave it at that ’til the next time I’m asked.