I have been blogging consistently for 3 months, publishing one article every other day. I expected writing would be “easier” by now, but it still takes me 3 hours to write 500 words. I wonder if I am doing something wrong? 🤔

I found this great article on how to turn writing into a habit: writinghabit.com. One of its points struck a chord with me.

Write, don’t publish: The main reason you have writer’s block is because you’re writing with publishing in mind. Forget about publishing and write for the sake of writing. Most of your words should be going into the bin. Otherwise, you’re spending too much energy editing while you write.

This was my eureka point. My writing is slow because I write AND edit at the same time!

Current inefficient status

I write directly on WordPress which has lots of distractions baked in. As I write, I am also juggling:

• Better Grammar: I use Grammarly to help point out my mistakes. While it’s helpful, I now realize that it’s one of the biggest sources of distraction in my writing flow. It keeps showing me errors as I write and my brain isn’t trained to ignore them. So I keep on getting rid of the red/yellow lines shown by it breaking my flow.
• Better Structure: I also organize my blog post into sections while I write. Whenever the paragraph starts to become too big, I start getting stressed. Instead of focusing on writing, I start looking for ways to break up the wall of text with new sub-headings or photos from the net.
• Better SEO: I link my text with external and internal links. I am also thinking about the featured image at the back of my mind.

A lot is going on. No wonder it takes me a long time to write!

Reduce distraction by punting editing out of writing

Writing should be all about getting our thoughts down from our minds. Getting the words flowing. We shouldn’t worry too much about the structure, grammar, or conciseness. It should be fun and stress-free.

We don’t feel stressed when talking to ourselves, so why should writing be any different? The stress comes from editing. So punt it out to a later stage. Don’t let the stress of editing kill the joy of writing.

There’s even a physical explanation for why editing kills your writing momentum. While writing is additive, editing is reductive. They are opposing forces. It’s painful to see the words you spent so much energy and willpower to produce get deleted.

writinghabit.com

So punt all distractions to the editing phase. Don’t bold, highlight, link, or structure (too much) while writing. Do them in the editing phase.

Two phases to publishing

Publishing is scary! When we write to publish, we get worried about the quality. Our brain gets afraid: “You are going to publish this junk?”. It wants to be perfect in front of its audience. The perfection will result in lots of back and forth in your writing.

So let’s change our perspective a bit.

Don’t write to publish. Write to edit and then edit to publish.

Don’t write for publishing. That promotes perfection since the piece would be for end-user consumption. Write for the Editing phase. This shifts the perspective that the piece is a draft. It takes away the burden of being perfect allowing you to write more. The bar for writing standards should be low.

Once the draft is ready, you edit it for publishing. You set the bar high at this stage. Be ruthless with your editing. Trim out all the fluffs to make it as concise as possible.

Final Thoughts – How I plan to write from now on

I am hoping this change of perspective will help me write more and write better. Writing should be fun, not stressful. Let’s make writing fun again by punting all the stressful jobs to the editing phase.

There are many ways to implement the idea above. My initial plan of action is:

• Stop writing on WordPress editor directly for writing. I will use WordPress editor during my editing phase, not for writing.
• Write on Obsidian. It’s less distracting than WordPress + I already use it for note-taking for my second brain.
• Write early drafts of blog posts on Obsidian, pile them up first, and then pull one out for editing and publishing when needed.

Also, this has the added benefit of not publishing everything I write. Some thoughts and pieces can just live in my Obsidian’s second brain. I can now write for myself too, not just for the world.