After reading Julian Shapiro's guide on writing I realized that I do not write for anyone but myself. My objectives for writing makes the reason behind writing clear and my motivation ensures that I am able to see through with it. When you have the wrong objective or haven't figured your reason for writing and have no motivation in place for it, this causes a friction between you and writing, and to write, you need to reduce the friction.
My objectives for writing are:
- I write because it helps me learn better. I am able to think about concepts and topics indepthly, distill the topics or ideas into simple chunks that I can understand, assimilate those chunks in order to be able to make sense of them and then write about them.
- I write as an outlet for me to talk about the things I like, obsess or geek over.
- I write because I want to learn to write better.
- I write as a medium for documenting my life.
- I write because I use writing as a platform to connect with like minded people. When a person resonates with something I've written, it brings about serendipity.
- I write because I want my writings to one day help someone or have even the tiniest impact on a person.
- Writing for me is a way to properly process my thoughts and feelings.
- I write to make reference to things for future use.
My motivation for writing is simply for documentation.
I read a few things I wrote back in 2017 and 2021 and it made me realise that I write well when I'm not under pressure. I enjoyed reading those writings because it allowed me to re-live whatever I was feeling in the moment. It's like I captured a moment using words and it felt good to read and understand what that moment was like.
With documentation, you are able to relive experiences and emotions, you notice growth and change. You can see how your writing evolved, and for your writing to evolve and become better, it means you started reading and understanding better. Only words and actions can tell how mature a man is or if a man is maturing and the best way to capture1 these maturity for the future you is either by constantly recording yourself or writing. And as we all know, writing is the easiest to do.
I write for myself but I do it in public because it helps me to stay accountable and stay consistent...
Re-writing is re-thinking. It’s the best single best way to sharpen your ideas. - David Perell
References
Footnotes
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Images captures your facial expressions, body languages in the moment, but they do not do a good work of capturing your emotions. We cover up heartbreaks and sufferings with the prettiest smiles, but when you write, you cannot mask your writings with smiles. You write exactly how you feel, because you have to do it with words, you might not be able to use the right words or be as descriptive as possible but in the words you write, you feel and you understand. ↩