One of the nice things about the past month is that a lot of my Internet friends have decided to dust off their old websites and start writing again. One of those is noted beer and beard expert Phillip Bowden. He recently wrote about one of the reasons he stopped writing frequently on his site: fear.
I love to write, and most days I just do it for myself, but there have been so many times recently where I wished I would’ve published something that I let linger in this sort of perfectionist purgatory that is my drafts folder.
I get scared that it’s not good enough, that people will scoff at it, that no one will give a shit.
I think this is something common amongst most people. One of the reasons I stopped regularly posting on carpeaqua because I felt like I needed to only write something that was a thousand or more words. When I was in college and looking for an excuse to not do my Java homework, that’s not a bad prospect. Now that I am trying to run a company and keep my wife and dog from divorcing me, free time to write recreationally is harder to find.
I no longer second guess what I want to write on this site because it is not long enough or interesting enough to a broad audience. When an idea for an article pops in my head, I launch MarsEdit and just start writing. The goal is to just get the content out of my head and into word form. Even if I don’t finish it right in that sitting, I want to get as much out of my head so that I am committed enough that not going back would be wasteful. I am lucky in that writing is not a vexing process for me. I don’t consider myself a great writer by any stretch, but I can drop five hundred words that make reasonable sense in around fifteen minutes no sweat.
I am sure there are people who don’t care for everything I post on this site, but I am not writing for them. I write for myself. carpeaqua is a mental exercise for me. It’s an escape. When I can no longer stare at the problem in front of me in Xcode, I start writing. When I have an idea in my head I want to work out, I start writing. When I find a subject I am obsessed with like the Amazon Appstore, I write it to death.
Not everyone who reads this site will enjoy this specific post, but if I had let fear stop me from even writing it, both me and the people who do enjoy it would be losing out.