Anna Birchall

For me, this is Johanna. We first met when she was 21 and I was 22 and later became a couple. What is me in me has unfolded primarily in her company. This has been a mutual unfolding; we spoke each other into being.

Writing a blog is not like writing for a publication. There is no preexisting audience you have to please. The audience is created as a reflection of your curiosity.

To grow skilled, you need to push yourself outside your comfort zone and put your goals a little beyond what you can pull off. But also? You need to finish and publish stuff because there are certain things you can only learn by finishing. Deadlines are the tool I use to balance this tradeoff. I tell myself, “I’m going to write the best piece I can... See more

A simple format: “Here is a problem I had and here’s how I solved it.” (Or, “I haven’t solved it yet but these are some reflections.”) Having a problem to solve, or a question that demands an answer, makes the text live and move. Otherwise, it is just a clump of words, and it is unclear why I should read on.

Don’t aim too high when you write your first posts. Maybe just do 500-word pieces, and do them with a simple format.

Not that many people will care about what you write, at least for the first few years, so make the writing useful to you. Write in a way that lets you refine your thoughts about the things that matter. Write to experience what you care about in higher resolution, write to enhance your feeling of aliveness.

It is what is odd about you that is interesting. If you work hard, you will be able to write like everyone else in your genre, but the result will never be rich as the texture of your own personality. So, don’t think too much about how you are supposed to write, how others do it, or what the conventions demand. Just try to amuse yourself.

What you see in the biographies of great artists, great writers, great anything is that they are good at figuring out where the vectors align. They are able to keep track of their values and be attuned to themselves, and at the same time be cold-headed about how the world works: not shaping themselves to fit the world, but figuring out how to... See more