Meta
āShut Up and Writeā as an improvement on āHit Publishā
- Ok nice, here I am on a zoom call with Simon.
- As with the āhit publishā sessions that I did at Ship It Week (āI know what āmy thingā isā and āBecoming angryā, I donāt have any kind of agenda right now, I have no ideas in my head, Iām just gonna let it flow for a bit (e.g. as described in my famous 04. It flows, if you let it vignette)
- āHit Publishā was a great container that we did ~daily at Ship It Week, and itās great if youāre getting started and what youāre bottlenecked on is publishing a few things to grow your confidence, but once publishing stuff isnāt a problem, it becomes limiting because it of course, youāre writing something for an hour and then hitting publish, AKA itās a first draft. I want to work on things for multiple days, if not maybe weeks, make them really good
- E.g., Lennox Johnson has only written 3 substack posts, but heās got to 500 subscribers with those 3 posts, because theyāre very good, very dense, have clearly been sweated over
- Similarly, itās clear that Sasha Chapin is publishing things that he has polished for a while, and also theyāre based on ideas that he has chewed on for a while. Deeper wisdom rather than surface-level insights innit
āGood for you!ā āfeedbackā vs useful criticism
- So far, I have received one hard-ass piece of feedback on my writing, from Sasha Chapin, and it was super useful:
- Everything else Iāve received has been āthis is great, keep going!ā. Which is very lovely and valuable to receive as a beginner, but Iāve received enough of it now!
- I now want to move to a place where people who I respect are saying "these 3 paragraphs bored me", "I think overall this post isn't very interesting", etc. Criticism, not encouragement
- Supportive hard-ass vibes:
- Criticism, not encouragement:
Object-level
- So anyway, that was all quite meta-level.
Iām plateauing
- The object-level thing here is a sense of, Iām plateauing right now, writing-wise. I know that Iām naturally quite good at it, but I have a sense that I havenāt really improved since I was a teenager. I didnāt do an english literature undergrad, I havenāt written much in the last 10 years, really Iāve never tried to improve my writing
- Why improve my writing? Why not just think āIām pretty goodā? Well actually, the thing is, I donāt want to like, improve on a per-sentence level via idk, watching lectures or something. When youtube serves me videos by āwriting teachersā Iām mostly like āblehā.
Not āget better at writingā, but ābe more ambitious re: my writingā
- I think that actually I donāt want to be taught how to improve as much as I want to just aim for more depth, more ~beauty, more profundity. So itās not even a case of adding new techniques as much as it is just a case of setting the bar higher. āOk, this bit of writing is good, but I donāt just want to publish it and call it a day.
- What if it's just a few paragraphs of a much more ambitious thing?
- What if I spend a fortnight writing a post (instead of my median time of 3 hours, and my current max time of 3 days)?
- What if I really take myself seriously? (A key theme at the minute)
- Re: taking myself more seriously
- Really, itās, instead of feeling satisfied with golden trinkets, ācheck it out, I made something, I know itās only a small thing but itās mine, and itās quite prettyā, aiming for gold ingots, aiming for real substance. Etc. Anyway, you get the point.
What does getting more ambitious re: my writing look like?
- (There's kind of a vignette in here):
- I think itās simple. Gather some gold grains, keep gathering more, at some point thereāll be aliveness and a desire to make something, then, donāt stop at the first pretty thing that you make, hold off on sharing it, keep working on it, keep adding grains, have a break, do something else, let it percolate, add more, keep going. Itās simple. Really itās impatience and the need for validation now, tell me Iāve made something good now, that makes me a peddler of cheap gold-plated rings, some gold in there, undeniably, but also a fair amount of some uninspiring metal, some dull copper to pad it out, and a dearth of diamonds. The best writing is pure gold, every paragraph alive, every sentence essential, no impurities turning the metal to bastard alloy, no naked stretches that make you wish for gems, etc. Bedecked in jewels, of different colours too, surprises, novelty, not mundane, not the same diamond duplicated innumerably on every piece. (I worry about this, Iām reminded of a David Foster Wallace interview where he talks about freshman creative writing students who can do one or two things well and then come to rely on that and avoid the stuff theyāre bad at)
- Patience, a knowing that the satisfaction at sharing something that youāre deeply proud of is better than the cheap thrill of people liking a fragment of a thing. The vignettes made sense during that time in my life; Iād never done anything like that before! And they were really quite nice! But ultimately, they were the minimum viable dose of gold, they were me hitting publish on a thing as soon as it gleamed, as soon as it contained one gem. Each vignette was a single gem, really.
- How could I take them and arrange them into something larger, more meaningful? Perhaps a short story? Why not try?
Ok, but seriously, what might it look like?
- Iāve never wanted to write fiction, short stories, becauseā¦ something like, Iāve been too preoccupied with figuring out my own story, like, āwhy would I make shit up, who cares about made up shit, I donāt care about making up characters and scenes and plots for the sake of itā, etc
- (this makes me wonder if there a few "types of guy" re: writing fiction (I mean, of course there are) ā there is probably one key archetype of āloves telling storiesā, and maybe another which is like āthis is how I process what has happened in my lifeā)
- I am currently writing a few things: I wonder if I can harness the genuine aliveness there, rather than āno, I will force myself to invent a new character, because, idk, thatās what David Foster Wallace would doā
What would be the point in writing a short story?
Mythopoesis
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To capture a moment from my life, in an evocative way, and give it a different ending (inspired by my recent coaching call with Mary)
- ![[Shut up and write session 1 - 2025-10-27-1761572315137.webp]]
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Write a scene from my life, exactly how it happened, but with the wisdom of adult Alex. E.g. as a teenager, key memory of being in car with my dad, us not connecting, key belief clicks into place of āitās my fault, Iām boringā. Re-writing that story (as Iām doing over at Mythopoesis 1 - same life story, different conclusions, but like, prettily, and in a way that can be shared, making it in a way even more real) would be really great IMO
Empathy/compassion
- Write from the perspective of another member of my family, to gain empathy for them
- Write from the perspective of a friend, to gain empathy for their experience