Stephen King often goes to writers’ conferences. There will be this question and that question and the next question and inevitably someone will ask, “Stephen King, you are one of the most successful, revered writers of your generation. What kind of pencil do you use?”

This is an example of focusing on the wrong thing. It doesn’t matter. It’s a way to hide. There is no correlation between how writers write and how good their work is. Forget about asking how writers do it and just write.

This is an interesting anecdote I heard on The Tim Ferriss Show in which he interviewed Seth Godin. If you don’t recognize both of these names, it’s time for you to get acquainted. The show was first released in 2016, but Tim re-posted it presumably to fill in for the holiday last week. If you don’t want to listen to the entire episode, at about minute 29 they start a discussion about Seth writing a daily blog. Seth names writing a daily blog one of the top five best business decisions that he’s ever made.

There is so much great content in this interview including business and marketing advice, a discussion of the difference between a freelancer and an entrepreneur, why Seth doesn’t use Twitter, and the benefits of writing every day. I hope that you listen, and I would like to hear your thoughts.

7-10-20

I have not been writing nearly as long or as much as Seth Godin, but I have my own experience with realizing the benefits of writing every day.

Daily writing is the one habit I have maintained for over 580 days straight. I rarely schedule a post because it’s important for me to write every day. It’s like exercise.

I notice it’s a lot easier to craft emails with minimal editing. It’s also a lot easier to edit other people’s words. I find a tendency to want to shorten things and make them as simple as possible. 

I think that I have also honed my ability to detect differences among good writers, really good writers, and great writers. We can all spot bad writers, so no sense spending much time on them.

I notice when I write a post that I know is going to be an episode of my podcast, I write it differently. The tone and language are more informal. I wonder if I should deliberately write that way or keep my standard “voice” for writing. I suppose I can look at them as tools to be deployed as needed.

The bottom line is that I definitely feel the benefits of writing every day.

And of course, I’m not going to stop.

#Teamstreak