On Writing: An Update
In which I break the silence and muse about the future
Hi ho, dear subscribers. 👋🏻 It's been a while. So I suppose I ought to explain the relative radio silence after what was, for a while, a fairly prolific period.
Before I get into that, a quick update on what I've been doing:
I published another piece in Business Insider about how my relationship with my parents has evolved over the years.
I had the pleasure of writing a piece for Modern Farmer about Homegrown, the amazing nonprofit my friend Jèrèmy runs in AZ.
My friend Cyd just released her Food, Faith and Fulfilling Your Purpose course, a beautiful labor of love that’s been in the works for years. I'm honored to have been included in the lineup of 20+ speakers. (And she's offering it for free, no catch, no strings attached.)
Despite all this, I've been struggling to write. After a stretch from 2020 to 2022 that saw me turning out a ton of writing and content—a podcast, a popup newsletter, multiple blog posts, a weekly "food news" newsletter, and numerous essays—I feel as if I've hit a wall.
I think it's a combination of two things: overwhelm and fear.
First, the overwhelm. March was the craziest month I've ever had as a freelancer. Lucrative, to be sure, but I did the equivalent of two month's work in about four and a half weeks, which meant I was researching, writing, or editing almost nonstop during working hours. Afternoon walks went from a time to recharge to the only time I had to check email. My commitment to digital minimalism, including an appropriate amount of mental rest, went out the window. I lost a lot of discipline, including in doing deep work and deliberately decoupling from my phone, and I'm still recovering.
And the fear...I dumped a lot of ideas about this in a big freewrite yesterday, but it boils down to this: I'm afraid to spend time on things I can't or don't want to monetize, and I'm afraid to put out anything that doesn't meet the standards I believe good writing must live up to. I feel like everything needs to be meticulously outlined and researched, checked and double-checked, printed and red penned and polished before I release it into the world. (This coming from someone who used to LiveJournal almost daily...)
So I'm afraid, and I'm too proud to admit to myself that I need a lot more practice to become a truly good writer.
I want to work on craft. I want to get better. But apparently I'm too frightened of wasting time and being mediocre to play around in the messy sandbox that is creativity. When confronted with my shortcomings, I freeze.
See the irony here? Even though I know the act of writing will help me get better, I can't bring myself to dedicate the time to something I've long claimed I feel called to do. I feel locked up and tight when I set out to write an essay or article—or even when I think about doing so outside the confines of work.
I'd just like to recapture the creativity, the passion, the desire to write that drove me to action and generated so much in the past. Somehow, I'd like to combine that with what I've learned about writing in the years between my most recent prolific period and now, to merge passion with craft and enjoy the process of getting ideas down and watching a piece go from rough to polished—instead of worrying about how it's going to get there or whether I'm "doing it right."
What will this look like for Sam. Writes.? I don't know just yet. I'd like to get back to posting at least a couple times a month; I think trying to commit to once a week might be a bit much given the brainspace I'm in right now. I don't feel ready for a solid commitment, even though that might be the best way to re-establish a disciplined writing habit.
I've been toying on and off with the idea of journaling in public as a way of sharing the ideas that have been bouncing around in my head and to give myself permission to not be perfect. That might be an option.
Whatever it looks like, I want to try. I want to stop shoving non-work writing to the back burner and start feeling what it feels like to be a writer for real, not just a writer of blogs or business content. I want to recapture the mental stimulation and flow of ideas I enjoyed in the past and see where it takes my craft—and what God does with it as I continue to grow.
As always, it's a journey. Thanks for sticking around to see how it goes. 🙂