Writing Thoughts Into Existence

Why do I write, and why I think you should also consider it

Greetings, lovely readers!

You may have noticed a conspicuous absence last week. No, I wasn't whisked away by aliens (although that would make for an interesting writing topic). Alas, I simply dislocated my shoulder during a skiing vacation. I wish there was an interesting story there, but simply slipping over ice in the parking lot wasn’t all that exciting.

But let's not dwell on my clumsiness. Despite the limited range of motion, I’m back in action, and this week I thought I’d share a little bit of why I started writing in the first place, and why I’d say you should too.

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Growing up, I never met any writers. Even reading already seemed like an art slowly being forgotten. Writing was something other people were doing. And if you were reading, then you were reading stuff written by people you’ve never met before.

Throughout law school, it was more of the same. My readings were only of notable scholars or supreme court justices. And despite reading some fiction books, and plenty of non-fiction ones, I never gave much thought to writing as a craft.

During my MBA was when I first started seriously following certain writers. Blogs and newsletters from Substack, Medium, and the likes became appealing. I increasingly stopped consuming content from mass media news outlets and opted to learn and develop my thinking through more bespoke channels.

Yet still, I had no relationship with any of the writers I was following. That first changed with the writing of one of my favorite Wharton professors, Gad Allon. It was only some time after graduation when I began to wonder about the possibility of developing a writing habit. Gad suggested I check out the Write of Passage writing course. And just like that (and after 6 months of procrastination) I started the 5-week super-intensive program founded by David Perell.

Why Write?

There were three main reasons which got me excited about writing. Remembering my primary school English education, I’d say the three reasons perfectly match the three types of the present tense (to all you native English speakers - this is how English is taught as a 2nd language).

Present Simple – used to describe actions that happen regularly – “I write”

I never really appreciated to what extent my thinking can evolve while writing. Every time I sit down to write, I get up understanding my own opinions much better. I often start writing thinking one thing and end up realizing my opinion is completely different. Only once I have to struggle with phrasing, sentence structure, and narrative, am I able to form actual opinions. As a side note, this is why I believe tools like ChatGPT are far from replacing writers – because good writing is really about thinking.

Present Continuous – used to describe action currently in progress – “I am writing”

If writing is really about thinking. Then continuously writing means continuously thinking. By developing a consistent writing habit my goal was to document the ongoing evolution of my thoughts. What a treat it will be the first time I change my mind regarding a previous post. I much prefer to write a follow up post acknowledging my new found thinking instead of backwards rationalizing and defending a ‘past mistake’.

Present Perfect – used to express a past event that has present consequences – “I have written”

Writing continuously means building a body of work that I can use to connect, debate, and converse with other people. Because I’m an opinionated guy, I regularly share my thoughts (sometimes even insights) with my colleagues. But with my writing I can reach people I’ve never met before, or even ones I have but don’t get to share ideas with on a regular basis. It means that I get to share my ongoing learnings with all of you fine readers, receive valuable feedback, and develop my writing (and thinking!) even further. 

A few weeks ago, I attended a large dinner where multiple people shared their thoughts and debated what I had written on the subject of learning about parenting prior to becoming one. It was wonderful.

Write of Passage

This writing course was like no other course I’ve ever attended. The sheer amount of knowledge and experiences I’ve accumulated in five weeks was nothing short of mind blowing. Through classes, mentor sessions, writing gyms, feedback gyms, and other additional workshops I learned a ton about writing online and forming a writing habit that works for me. If you’re thinking about developing a writing habit yourself then I highly recommend you check out Write of Passage.

The best piece of advice I got during the course was from Michael Sklar, one of 14 course mentors. One of the biggest barriers I had starting out was deciding what I was going to write about. Defining the scope felt critical. How else was I going to attract readers? How will I be able to grow a following? But Michael made the bold claim that the true barrier and risk that I was facing was that I would stop writing. He convinced me that as long as I would continue writing I’ll be sure to eventually zero in on the space I wanted to write about. 

With this wisdom, I felt liberated. It freed me to focus on the writing craft itself, and whatever topic felt right at the moment. Instead of optimizing for distribution, I was focusing on what I actually had to say. Michael’s advice was for me to focus on writing for 40 weeks (give or take) and to trust that my readers will help me pinpoint the value of my writing (no pressure).

After 20 weeks of publishing I’m still playing around with various topics. While a lot of my writing originates in my work as a product manager or in my personal life, you might notice that most of it revolves around thoughts about managing relationships and decision-making. If you’ve noticed it, I applaud you. It wasn’t intentional. 

The only reason why I’m even aware of it is that a few weeks ago I decided to train a GPT-3 model over 16 of my essays and ask it: “what topics does the author seem to enjoy writing about?” Relationships and decision-making were top of the list (along with several examples that really surprised me). In case you’re interested, I shared the complete answer it produced in this Twitter thread.

For some time now I’ve been meaning to write this post to share what made me start writing in the first place. But somehow, every week, I ended up writing about something else. What prompted me this week was one specific friend who recently found out about my writing and was shocked I didn’t share it with him ahead of time. You see, I was focusing on the writing and ended up ignoring distribution entirely. Maybe I took Michael’s advice to the extreme. But at least I’m still writing. 

Moving forward, I plan to continue following Michael’s advice, yet I promised myself I’d make more of a conscious effort to get my writing in front of additional readers. After all, if I’m looking to connect with people over my writing then I should probably let them read it.