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Writing Isn’t The Goal. Publishing Is
If you want to be a professional writer today — meaning in the context of the internet — then writing isn’t your goal.
Publishing is.
What separates the most successful, most-read, most referenced, most interesting writers today from everyone else isn’t just the quality of their ideas, but their consistency. Coming up with unique things to say is only the first half of their greatness. The second half is their unrelenting commitment to sharing those ideas regardless of whether or not they feel “ready.”
I call this Practicing In Public.
Step 1: Come up with an idea
Step 2: Work through that idea
Step 3: Publish that idea
Step 4: Repeat
The feedback loop for writers who do not Practice In Public is long. These are writers who sit in their room or coffee shop all day long working in a vacuum. They are their own echo chamber. And from the moment they set out to explore an idea, to the moment that idea makes its way into the world, the amount of time that has elapsed is significant.
In the case of many aspiring writers hell-bent on starting with a book, this first feedback loop can take years.
Meanwhile, writers who Practice In Public on the internet shorten their feedback loop to days, hours, even minutes.
They come up with an idea. They work through that idea. And they publish that idea.
This becomes their skill, their superpower. It’s not just the writing they become proficient in, but getting out of their own way, trusting that what they write tomorrow will be better than what they write today, and hitting the publish button.
As a result, they become more than just writers.
They become publishers.
This is an Atomic Essay from the Ship 30 for 30 daily writing challenge.
