Why I write
I write for myself, more so, for my future self. It helps me think, organise my ideas, my thoughts and better articulate them. Writing is a tool for thinking.1 It turns ideas into something I can look at, move around, and come back to later.
I also try to write with the ear.2 I read things back out loud, and if a sentence doesn’t sound nice that way, I rewrite it until it does.
I’m usually more interested in what’s behind the idea than on the idea itself. Because once I dive deeper into the source and thinking behind an idea, I get to better places. The idea might become something entirely different.
It’s less so about the output and more about the why.
The final output is usually a consequence of that thinking and having fun along the process. If it looks good in the end, it’s because I’m usually stubborn on making things as good as I can possibly make, and I happen to care a lot about that.
I keep the pieces I give up on. Most of them go into a drawer and sit for a while. Some come back later as something else entirely, and those are often the ones I like best.
Footnotes
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The phrase borrows from Maggie Appleton’s Tools for Thought, where she reminds us that writing itself is one of the oldest tools for thought we have, long before any software. The “evergreen notes” idea I lean on here was first presented by Andy Matuschak in About these notes and built on by Steph Ango in Evergreen notes, turning ideas into objects you can revisit and reshape. ↩
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C.S. Lewis wrote a letter in 1959 to a schoolgirl who was asking for writing advice. I love the points he shares and often come back to it as a reminder for better writing. In the letter he writes: “Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken.” ↩