Don’t write good. Write.
Disclaimer: This post is meant for you if like me, you’re still early in your writing career and still only get 10–20 views per post.
When I began writing, I spent a lot of my day planning what I would write. Would I write about failure and why it’s okay? Or would I try to tell people the seven secret steps to success? The list of ideas was long.
But once I got to sitting in front of my laptop, I barely made any progress. I would type a few sentences or a paragraph, then proceed to smash the backspace button until I was left with a blank page. This ritual continued until at a certain point, I simply gave up and decided not to write the article.
Why did this happen?
Was it a lack of ideas? Probably not, since the articles were usually thought out beforehand with some semblance of structure already prepared.
Was it because the topic was inherently narrow? Also unlikely, considering failure and success are topics that million of people have wrote and continue to write about.
I think the reason behind my cold feet — or more appropriately, my cold fingers — was because I feared people would judge the quality of my writing. I was afraid that my writing wouldn’t be engaging enough, or the logic would be flawed, or it would just be plain boring.
This fear was cemented once I sent a few articles to some national newspapers and none of them even were responded to. I thought to myself, “If my simplistic clickbait article wasn’t even good enough to be accepted to one of the most click-baity websites in Indonesia, then there must be something wrong with my writing”.
So I put down my pen and turned to a new hobby: reviewing movies (Okay, this is also writing, but you get what I mean). For the past few months, I’ve spent a huge chunk of my waking hours watching movies and writing my opinions about them. I didn’t expect a lot, of course. I mean, these were very simple reviews, with laughable content and shoddy quality of writing. I wasn’t really trying to please anyone, rather I was just trying to convey my thoughts in a condensed format.
And, slowly, I regained my confidence.
Not once during the process of my reviews have I tried to be poetic or articulate. Not once have I purposely tried to make my reviews newspaper-worthy. Not once have I ever thought my reviews were high quality literature.
But somehow, writing them had made me more confident in my writing. As I’m writing this, I have no idea if my current writing is clearer or if it has a better “flow” compared to my old writing. But the pleasure I feel writing this articles is lightyears away from the pleasure I felt writing my old articles.
So, if I can give any advice to fellow struggling writers, or to those who want to write but feel like they weren’t “chosen” to write is this:
One, be realistic. I’m probably not the next J.K Rowling, or the next Stephen King, or the next Tere Liye. Because I accept that fact, I don’t expect my writing to be as good as these aforementioned writers. I make rambling sentences and use confusing words, and that’s okay. No one’s expecting you to be at the level of these writers, and be without mistakes. So don’t put that burden on yourself.
Two, write about what you want. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had an idea for an article, but stopped myself from writing it because I think it wouldn’t be “market-friendly” or would be too “obscure”. If you’ve read this far, I assume you also have faced this situation (also thanks for reading this far). But I think we shouldn’t worry too much about what’s popular and what’s not. The best writers didn’t become famous because they followed the tide of what was popular. They became famous because they were willing to be original and write about what they enjoyed and what they knew and what they wanted. So if you have an idea about, say, “The politics of Wakanda and why opening their trade barriers will bring about an era of global economic prosperity.”, write it.
But okay, maybe you’re saying to yourself, “Okay, I can do number one and two, but I don’t think I can write it well enough.”
Well then, here’s my final piece of advice:
Don’t write good. Write.
Write bad stories. Write horrible articles. Write sub-par reviews. Get your fingers tapping and your pens moving. Don’t get trapped into thinking you always have to put out good content. Just keep throwing out content into the world.
I think for people like us, who are just starting out and whose fanbases only exist in our minds, we have the luxury of putting out bad content. We don’t need to answer to anyone. So stop worrying about writing beautiful articles, and just try to write articles. At one point, you’ll start to enjoy writing more and try less to simply please others.
A friend once told me, “If you have a good message, people won’t care about how you write it. People will care that you wrote it.” What I took away from that is that the people that will matter and the people that will support you are the people who look past the quality of writing, and focus on what you’re writing about. So focus less on writing good.
Focus on writing more.
