"Once upon a time, my coach and friend Anne Bramley pointed out that I could count anything related to my project as part of my writing. If I was reading, taking notes, or thinking about the piece, I was writing. I found this idea a revelation and a liberation."
I'm still struggling with this tbh. On days like today I feel like I haven't really done much work because I can't see the evidence in word count. And yet, deep down I know that I have been up to very important things in fact.
I found your Substack through the MasterClass essay you'd done for Longreads, which I was rereading to understand how essays work because I want to write more of them. I'm glad I read your posts now instead of saving them later because this was something I needed to read. I've always found "write every day" and "allow yourself to write badly" to be very useful, but your take on these really helped me figure out some problems I hadn't been able to recognize, let alone solve. I just spent the afternoon copying excerpts from this post and Aaron's thread in my diary because both of you just made a project I'm working on so much easier. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate them a lot and I'm so glad I found this!
Rough times with rough drafts
"Once upon a time, my coach and friend Anne Bramley pointed out that I could count anything related to my project as part of my writing. If I was reading, taking notes, or thinking about the piece, I was writing. I found this idea a revelation and a liberation."
I'm still struggling with this tbh. On days like today I feel like I haven't really done much work because I can't see the evidence in word count. And yet, deep down I know that I have been up to very important things in fact.
I found your Substack through the MasterClass essay you'd done for Longreads, which I was rereading to understand how essays work because I want to write more of them. I'm glad I read your posts now instead of saving them later because this was something I needed to read. I've always found "write every day" and "allow yourself to write badly" to be very useful, but your take on these really helped me figure out some problems I hadn't been able to recognize, let alone solve. I just spent the afternoon copying excerpts from this post and Aaron's thread in my diary because both of you just made a project I'm working on so much easier. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate them a lot and I'm so glad I found this!