Why Don’t I Write More?
This afternoon, I was listening to Tyler Cowen’s interview on the Tim Ferriss Show. As a blogger, economics nerd, and aspiring author that grew up playing classical piano, this interview felt so important and relevant to me that I immediately sat down and started writing this post.
Early in the interview, Tim and Tyler discuss an article that Tyler wrote on the Marginal Revolution blog. In that article, he asked a simple question:
“What is it you do to train that is comparable to a pianist practicing scales?”
As someone who spent a lot of time practicing scales on a piano in her younger years, that question immediately resonated with me. It also made me wonder why I haven’t thought of practicing other pursuits (outside piano) this way before… but I guess that’s why Tyler Cowen is Tyler Cowen and I am me. Applying this question to my own situation is shockingly simple:
If I want to be a writer, why don’t I write more?
Or more specifically (as every good pianist practicing scales knows): why don’t I write every day?
For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. Unfortunately, this resulted in a pronounced tendency to put writing on a pedestal. I never think about practicing writing on a regular basis like scales… I think about carving out big chunks of uninterrupted time, with a clear plan, in the perfect environment, to execute polished, complete pieces of writing.
With that set of parameters, it’s surprising I ever write anything.
I sit down and expect to play Beethoven perfectly on the first try, every time, without even practicing.
In addition to the pedestal problem (also known as “Beethoven or bust”), writing has always been inextricably linked to thinking for me. In a lot of ways, writing is how I think. While this sounds interesting, especially because it seems to be something Tyler Cowen and I have in common according to this interview… in practice, it is both a blessing and a curse.
The primary curse of a brain that thinks by writing is that there is always a lot of writing, and it’s a mess. I’ll be the last person to call myself organized, but the volume of half-finished drafts on every topic under the sun with no organizational method hiding out in every word processing, note-taking and blogging platform I use is overwhelming. Sometimes I switch programs just so I can start fresh and not have to see that draft pile ever again. (I’m aware this is probably not a healthy approach, but we do what we must to hide from the drafts, right?)
The question I had not asked myself until listening to this podcast episode is WHY that pile of drafts is so overwhelming to me?
Honestly, it’s because I thought they were a waste.
After all, if they are hiding in my draft pile from three years ago, they are far from being Beethoven.
They represent a lot of “wasted” time, all those words that will never see the light of day. This may not make sense, but I honestly feel guilty about those wasted words. I should have been doing something better with all that time, or writing things that actually got published somewhere, right? After all, isn’t that the point?
Is it?
Not really. Currently, I’m not a journalist. I’m not an author. I’m not a reporter. I’m just a random person who thinks by writing.
When I heard Tyler Cowen casually describe his pile of discarded drafts, something shifted. He is a world-renowned economist with a blog followed by hundreds of thousands if not millions of people… if he doesn’t have a problem with “wasting” words, why should I?
In the interview, he actually explained why “wasting” words is a good thing:
“I have many hundreds of pages of unpublished stuff, and it’s going to stay that way… in varying phases of completeness… but it was necessary to get to other things.”
I guess we all have to play scales before we play Beethoven.
Thanks for the reminder, Tyler and Tim.
