January 04, 2016

I'm doing microblogs now

I’m trying to do this new thing in 2016 where I write these micro blog posts.

This is the first one.

One of my resolutions that I am rolling over from 2015 is to write more. Looking back, I’m proud of the writing I did last year: I published a critique-of-a-critique of The New School’s rebranding that got published in a design journal, and I wrote my first two pieces of creative non-fiction, to practice writing in a more novel-like style. One of the things I attribute to that relative success is turning off my need to edit myself constantly.

This year I’m going one step further. In 2015, if I had a thought that seemed like it would make a good blog post, I’d immediately write down a paragraph or two summarizing what I had in mind. I’d then add to it over the course of a few days until it felt like it was a complete thought. I’d re-read it a bunch but I’d never ask anyone else to read or edit it, and I was conscious of reeling it back when it felt like the scope was becoming too big for me to realisticaly complete.

In 2016, the process is going to look a little more like this: Have a thought, write a paragraph or two, make sure there aren’t grammatical errors, publish.

I looked at the few drafts I had last year that got lost somewhere along the path from brain inkling to final URL, and the one thing they share is that as I was writing them I developed the sense that they wouldn’t be as complete and self-contained as I wanted them to be. There were points I was missing, aspects I hadn’t considered, research I wanted to do. This year, I’m tossing out that aspect of the funnel. I’m making an effort not to care whether or not my thoughts are complete, whether they present a point of view, whether they have a thesis. I used to get caught up a lot in trying to establish the context for the thing I was writing about, trying to paint the picture that surrounds my idea for a theoretical audience that wasn’t familiar with what I was talking about. This time around I’m not doing that. If I have a thought I’m going to publish it.

So this was the thought I had. And now it’s a blog post. More to come.

@RobertVinluan