While mulling over the next essay to be written write, I felt the need for a reference guide to writing. The thought that crossed my mind at once was that instead of looking for a guide, I am going to write one for myself.
To create content consistently, creators follow a process well-tuned to their craft and themselves. The purpose of such a process is to provide direction when there is confusion or darkness.
A creator’s process is always evolving. By observing and changing their own creative process, creators further the state of the art and leave their own indelible signatures on it. Others see this, learn from it and continue the tradition.
We have so many ideas that we wish to share, born out of our experiences and the unique ways in which we process them to draw inferences.
The objective of all writing is to add a new dimension to the reader's current experience of the subject.
What is a Minimum Viable Essay, anyway?
Does it have to be at least 500 words? What should be the subject? How much research goes into it? Should it have lots of references like an academic paper?
When I am in the process of convincing myself or someone else about an idea, I begin by compiling my arguments in a note and figuring out what makes most sense.
With great excitement and a bit of nervousness, I share with you that I'm finally starting a weekly newsletter. This is happening now after a false start late last year, a lot of over-thinking and a dose of encouragement from a number of people. Read on to know the full story.
Our heads are idea-soup pots. We keep adding ingredients to them all the time. To do this, all you need to do is think and thinking is something we cannot stop even if we tried. That leaves the soup perpetually on the boil and us thinking:
How do we know what does it taste like? Is it any good? Do we need to mix it up a bit? Is there a balance of flavours?
In previous posts, I’ve shared that I am an extensive note-taker. Since then people have curiously asked me about the sort of things on which I take notes.
Luckily for me, a few crucial things had already happened within my note-taking system leading up to this point thus allowing me to answer this question as follows.
To begin with, I describe how I loosely organise my notes into clusters with links between related notes, considering that presently I have about 650 individual notes written over the period of about 2-3 years.
Ever since I decided to move to all-digital note-taking, over the past few years, I’ve used a number of note-taking apps to find what works best for me. During this pursuit for the ideal note-taking app, I realised that two features were essential for my purpose.
Make the process of writing seem less daunting
This week I started reading a new book and wanted to share with you how reading and note-taking contribute to my process for writing.