Writing Daily Is a Superpower

For the last 6 weeks since I started this newsletter, I’ve already published 30 short essays here. That’s more than I’ve written for the previous two years. Granted, I had a baby, a job, and other things demanding my attention. Right now this is my main creative project, and I plan to keep going at this pace until mid-April at least.

I’m doing this as a part of a daily writing challenge started by one of my Twitter friends. Over 30 people signed up to publish a short piece every weekday for 100 days. If it wasn’t for this challenge, I don’t think I would suddenly change my writing habits so fast. Luckily I know I’m the kind of a person who thrives on external accountability, and especially when I hit the wall, it’s amazing to know there are so many awesome people doing this together with me.

I never had as many ideas what I could write about as when I’m doing it daily. For every piece, two follow up ideas usually come to my mind. I know I don’t have to exhaust the topic in one go, connect all the dots, and have it all figured out before I hit publish. If there ideas worth tweeting about, they’re even more worth covering in a few hundred words.

Writing helps me think better. I never know if I actually understand something until I try to explain it in my own simple words. The more I write, the more loopholes in my reasoning I discover, and the more interesting questions I begin to ask myself.

Writing daily also adds structure to my otherwise unstructured life. Even if I do nothing else on that day, I know I’ve accomplished something. When countless things around the house are crying for my attention it helps me set boundaries without feeling guilty. Every short essay I publish helps me heal procrastination, perfectionism, and the desire to be seen as exceptional or smart.

This is my second daily creative challenge. The first time I published daily on my blog for a whole year, but it included sketches and calligraphy. Still, if it wasn’t for that first challenge, I wouldn’t be able to write like this now. Most of the best things I’ve ever written were created at that time.

I sense there’s a book that wants to be born out of the various threads I’m covering here. I still don’t know how I would pitch the book to someone, or even what the main theme or idea should be. This doesn’t bother me at all, I’m not in a hurry. I know it will all crystallize when the time is right.

It still feels unreal that not only there are people reading my words, some of them even want to pay me for this. I haven’t paywalled a single piece so far, and yet somehow this newsletter already covered for two days of my daughter’s daycare. She loves going there, which is great, because I wouldn’t be able to write daily otherwise. If someday this newsletter pays for her entire tuition, I will be the happiest person on Earth.

At some point I’d like to publish longer paid pieces connecting the dots from my daily posts. I’m still not sure what topics I’d like to cover in this form, I might need to write much more for the common themes to emerge. Still, if you want to support me on this creative journey and help my daughter play in the mud with her besties, you can already become a paying subscriber here.

Either way, if you promised yourself you’re going to write more in 2023, I highly encourage you to join us in our 100 day writing challenge. It’s definitely not too late to start, and I just know it will be an amazing journey that will take you places you’ve never thought about before.