One-Month Reflection

February 4th marked the one-month anniversary of the creation of my shorts page, a collection of my short-form writing. Seeing my friend Eli embark on his one-month writing journey inspired me to try it for myself. I was at a point where I was desperate to share my ideas, but I could not find the right medium to do so. Over the course of 2022, I wrote one single ten-thousand-word monstrosity detailing my self-reflection over the second semester of my freshman year. This put me in the mindset that all my writing needed to be long and arduous, hindering my motivation to crank out more. I made numerous amount of attempts over the following months to write new blog posts, but I failed in every regard. I forced myself to write things I wasn’t completely interested in. I started many pieces, only to give up on them halfway through. I experimented with book reviews and personal stories, but none of my ideas felt right. I never published any of these posts. I couldn’t meet the expectations that I demanded from myself.

I contemplated whether I actually liked writing or not. I knew I wanted to write, but I just could not come up with any ideas I deemed interesting enough to follow through on. Certainly, I wasn’t going to generate the long-form writing that I felt was necessary to be worthy to post on my blog. I learned to understand that the medium was my limiting variable. All of the problems stemmed from my inability to write long pieces on a whim. I needed to reorient my approach. After seeing Eli’s daily short-form writing, I was inspired to do the same. I wanted to write in a way that didn’t stress me out and made me want to finish whatever I started. I didn’t want the burden of tireless editing and endless reorganizing of my work. I was going to start writing shorter pieces of things I wanted to explore. Having often tweeted about shower thoughts and interesting tidbits, I already had a large repository of ideas. I realized that Twitter was already a different medium for expressing my ideas. I didn’t panic about sharing my thoughts; the platform made it natural for me to do so. Now, all I needed to do was to channel those ideas into a slightly more fleshed-out form.

I thought of just publishing new shorter articles onto my blog, but it didn’t feel right. My longer-form writing felt like my statement pieces. If I published many shorter pieces on top of them, then fewer people would have the chance of discovering them. I decided to create a separate page to host my short-form writing or my shorts. I spent a day or two designing the layout and ultimately chose to publish my first short on my personal website rather than my blog. I used Substack-like cards with a thumbnail, title, and date, with the hope that the friendly presentation would be inviting to read. I made a commitment on Twitter and my first short that I would write every day of the month. If you’re reading this now, then you know I wasn’t successful with that benchmark. However, I did achieve everything I had hoped to when I decided to create this shorts page.

Revelations

1. Lowering the burden to write

I began seeing writing in a new light. I would go into writing with a different mindset. Each piece was a unique exploration of ideas I had at the moment. I was not afraid of the time commitment I would have to put in each short, as I expected to finish on the spot, whether it took 15 minutes or an hour. The first short I wrote on “Dating Apps” became so long that I decided to publish it as a stand-alone blog. I didn’t plan on making it so long, but the words just kept on coming. It was also the first research-based piece that I published. Over the next week, I would just take notes on my phone during the day on the ideas that came to my head and pick the most interesting ones to write about at night. Sometimes, I would revive an idea I tweeted weeks or even months ago. While I was on vacation in Florida, I found inspiration in the new things that I saw and experienced. Although I did not have a great idea every day, I still felt motivated to write each short. It was exactly what I had hoped for.

2. Inviting Design

The Substack-like card design really motivated me to publish. This seems like a really strange reason to want to write, but I realized this when I found myself wanting to come up with clever titles and find unique thumbnails for each short. Some shorts would start out as a title before developing into ideas. I would spend long sessions hunting for the perfect image or trying to generate my own with Midjourney and DALLE2.¹ This process had the same feeling as customizing your lock screen, decorating your room, or putting Christmas lights up around your home. An interesting discovery indeed.

3. Publishing is fun

Publishing is fun. Working on something and having something to show for it was incredibly gratifying. I found myself wanting to share the things I wrote on Twitter. I liked seeing the thumbnail and titles popping up on my feed. I enjoyed finally substantiating the ideas that had been floating in my head for a long time. I also had this interesting feeling:

Sometimes when I publish an article I just stare at it (not even reading it) for the rest of the day. I have no idea why. Maybe because I’m proud? I waste so much time doing this

— Eric Chen (@below_ocean) February 3, 2023

Essentially, I would spend time just looking at my newly published article without even reading it. Maybe it was a sense of pride or maybe it was just a distraction. I’m not really sure I know, either. Nevertheless, each published article was a little win for the day. It kept me in good spirits and gave me an excuse to take an unnecessarily long break after. After finishing writing, I would fix grammar mistakes and read it over once or twice, no more. If I found any mistakes afterward, I would just quickly fix them and re-publish. This ensured that I wouldn’t get too bogged down by imperfect writing.

4. More topics to discuss

Writing about more topics gave me more conversation fodder. I’ve had some in-depth discussions with my friends about some of the things I wrote about, which generally led to more interesting conversations about other topics. I have referenced my own ideas when discussing the meaning of education and movies in one of my classes.

5. Writing in an IDE is easy?!

If you didn’t already know, this website was made with Hugo, a static site generator that compiles markdown files into HTML. It’s essentially a coding project that has a lot of the work done behind the scenes, but you still need a code editor to work on it. I did most of my writing within VSCode (a popular code editing interface). I realized that writing in such a weird environment removed all the distractions in a typical word editor. I would find spelling and grammar mistakes well after completing my first draft. The weird font and inverted colors eased the writing process. Even though I had great text editors like Obsidian, Notion, and Google Docs, I found myself preferring to write in VSCode. I know, what a nerd.

6. My shorts were not even that short

I assumed that I would just write short blips of what happened each day, but I ended up writing medium-length philosophical discussions of different topics. I developed an expectation that each short should be somewhat enlightening and shouldn’t be too short. This thought may end up becoming the same pitfall I fell into when writing blogs, so I am making a commitment to write about all sorts of things. Essentially, I need to temper and modify my expectations.

There was no exact pattern in length. Pieces range from 200-1,000 words. Whenever I published, I wasn’t even sure of how long each short was. A few days ago, I added a word count indicator at the bottom of each short. It was a good thing for me to not be sure of how long each piece was exactly, as it might have affected when I felt “done” exploring a particular topic.

What You Should Do

Do I recommend doing this? Hell yes, I do. It’s been an incredibly gratifying and interesting journey for me, and it’s only been a month. There is a lot of value in writing. It allows you to explore yourself, your ideas, and your environment. It’s an immortal snapshot of your identity at a given point in time. It allows you to be creative with your imagination. It doesn’t have to be short-form writing. It can be as long as you want. These shorts were just a strategy that worked for me. You can write stories, chapter books, recipes, or fanfictions. Whatever floats your boat. Just make sure to orient your writing in a way that maximizes your effort and interest. If you end up embarking on this new journey, please reach out. I would love to read any of your future (or current!) creations.