At school, some people were just good at writing. I never learnt to do it and thought they must have some natural talent I didn’t have. It wasn’t till I needed to get better at writing, that I learnt how to do it and eventually enjoyed it so much.

Keep going or turn around

I’ve always found writing a useful tool for thinking. When I catch myself ruminating, I’ll pull out a Uniball Micro 0.3mm pen and drag it back and forth across my hard cover journal.

Often what feels like a hundred different thoughts will boil down to a handful of irrational ones when you pull them out of your head and look at them.[i]

For some reason I couldn’t figure out how to write for others. I got below-average grades in written assignments through high school and university but made up for it with the numbers assignment. I’d always thought I could rely on my comfort with numbers, but it turns out you need to communicate insights for them to be useful.

I hit a wall when I got my first job and faced a choice. Learn to write so I keep going down this path or find another path.

I decided I’d learn to write. Maybe I fell for the sunk cost fallacy, but I’d worked so hard to get here and thought why not put in a bit more effort.

Learning to write

Everything changed when I went to one-on-one writing lessons. That’s when I realized you could learn to write. That there were principles of good writing.

As I learnt more about writing and writers, I realized it wasn’t some natural born talent you have but a skill you learn. “Man has an instinctive tendency to speak,” as Charles Darwin wrote, “whereas no child has an instinctive tendency to bake, brew or write”.

I fell in love with the craft.

I read books on writing and sought out ways to practice. At work, I sought out opportunities to write economic updates and government advice. At home, I tried out morning pages and filled up folders with word documents.

I really embraced Paul Graham’s advice to

Develop a habit of working on your own projects. Don’t let “work” mean something other people tell you to do. If you do manage to do great work one day, it will probably be on a project of your own.

Starting a website

After a while of working on projects, I wanted to keep going. I had an urge to write in public, I wanted to make a cool place to store that writing, and despite finding some great websites I was struggling to find answers to some questions I had.

So I decided to just start a website. My friend had encouraged me to just do it and I figured publishing work would provide some discipline and guard against perfectionism, or “the voice of the oppressor” as Anne Lamott refers to it.

Plus, I’m still young and have time to try things out that don’t necessarily make sense. As Kevin Kelly says

Your 20s are the perfect time to do a few things that are unusual, weird, bold, risky, unexplainable, crazy, unprofitable, and look nothing like “success”. For the rest of your life these experiences will serve as your muse.

I’m not sure where my writing and website will go, but it’s interesting and I’m having fun. I think that’s the best place to start.  

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[i] This practice of journaling is something I’ve done for 10 years and will do for the rest of my life.