How Do You Start Writing Online? And WHY?

You’re busy, but want to contribute. Here’s how I do it, and why. As originally published in Medium...

I got a note from Josh Atkins over at Funnelwise late on a Friday afternoon.

"I’ve come to really enjoy your blog posts. I keep feeling an internal tug to do it myself, not just to discuss some of our key learnings with FunnelWise, but in a similar way that you do- peeling back some of your personal layers to reveal how they inform your work. My problem is that I really don’t know where to start..."

I get asked this question a lot, actually, though rarely so thoughtfully. In fact I usually get asked it prefaced with a veiled insult.

“I’d love to do more writing / get going on Twitter / clean up my LinkedIn profile. But I am WAY too busy!”

Oh. Like I’m doing this shit in my copious spare time. Douchebag.

Like anything else, regular writing or active participation in any social medium rooted in the written word comes down to setting priorities. “Not having time to write” is code for not thinking it’s important enough to do so.

So why is it important to write for total strangers?

The Why

I think relationships are really important (see “How The World Works,”) in life and in business. Creating those relationships takes time and energy, out there in the world, shaking and moving. The same can be said of maintaining the relationships you already have. At some point (certainly by my stage of life,) you’re going to need to decide which is the better use of your dwindling spare time: keeping up with the people you know, or meeting new ones.

For me that’s an easy choice. I am not a “small talker.” I could give a shit less what you think about the weather. I actively despise shallow, polite conversation, and have no particular talent for “working the room.” It’s rare that I go out with the desire to meet new people, and?—?when I do meet someone new?—?I often like to see if they have the balls to go deep early.

Sometimes I make a conscious effort to provoke someone new with an overly intimate observation or question, just to see how they’ll respond. Will they reciprocate, or withdraw? Are they thoughtful? Are they self-aware? People who are have something to offer, in my experience, something worth trying to connect with. Agree, disagree, whatever. Take a position. Let’s get into it.Let’s get through the surface bullshit, and really talk.

That’s what I like, what I get from my friends, what I try to give the people I love. How are you, man. No… How are you. You doing ok? I heard that thing hit the wall. I heard she left. I know you guys are struggling right now… Are you ok?

That’s how I want to spend the time I really don’t have… with the comparatively small group of people who are already in my tribe. The downside of this , of course, is that you just stop growing. You get lazy. You get stale. You talk to people like yourself too much, and think everyone agrees. You unplug from the world, just a little bit more, year in, year out, and?—?eventually?—?it leaves you behind.

That’s why it’s good to go away to college. It’s why suburban dads usually have the wrong color jeans. It’s why, to your parents, Bluetooth is roughly as real and as useful as Feng Shui.

Active participation in social media turns out be a pretty good hedge against this kind of creeping obsolescence. Voracious consumption of any good medium helps, whether it be books, magazines, film, even TV these days.But social media adds a connection to other people in accessible proximity.You get to know them, and they get to know you?—?post by post, in less time it might take you to drive into the city, let along hang there. Eventually there’s someone new worth making time for, or even a group you share something real with. Your tribe grows, your world does, and so do you.

That’s worth a lot, especially as you get a little older, and the harness of your day-to-day responsibilities tightens.

The How

Regardless of your Why, once you decide writing is worth making time for, you’re left with the How.

The truth is you can tweet, like, and curate all you want, but to make the kinds of connections I described above, you’re going to need to contribute something of value, to share a little bit of yourself. You’re going to need to bang out some long-form content, and get it online in a way the world will notice.

The good news is the back half of that equation is a lot easier than it used to be. Writing, or more properly building an audience for what you write, used to require a tremendous amount of discipline, and a fair bit of specialized technical skill. I found the whole “Blog” thing a bit tiresome at some point, but love how all Medium asks you to do is write. It does the rest?—?the SEO bullshit, the promo, the e-mail push. All that stuff is overhead, for which I most definitely do not have the time or inclination.

So, you’re down to the writing. To begin I tend to think in terms of an audience, in my case Boston startup folks struggling with the kinds of strategic marketing and communications issues startups struggle with. Then I try to reflect on the experiences/thoughts/stories in my own life from the past week that might be worth sharing with those people, in a way that might contribute something of interest, or even of use.

Sometimes I’ll stumble on an anecdote for a dearly held belief, or a first principle worth reinforcing. No one except you reads everything you write,so revisiting the same handful of key themes is a feature that shapes yourvoice, not a bug that makes you tiresome.

I capture these story ideas as Drafts in Medium, then go back and fill in some structure. Once the sections are blocked I start on the prose, writing as I speak, then adding images and breaks to keep people visually engaged.When the rough version is done I give it a thorough edit top-to-bottom for pacing, then once more to crisp up the language and bring it all on point. I try to vary sentence structure, cut propositional phrases, and pick strong verbs. It sounds like a lot, but when I know the story I’m trying to tell in advance, the whole process usually takes less than an hour.

Then I sleep on it, and read it one more time the next day. Sometimes I’ll bounce a draft off someone I respect, otherwise I’m good to go. Push it intoBuffer for a well-timed bounce to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, and it’s done. Twice a week; lather-rinse-repeat.

It helps that I find the act of writing enjoyable, a way to gather and organize my own thoughts. There are some days even I hate to write, or don’t get to. But it always feels good to have written.

A good writer is like a good chef, in that nothing good in the kitchen is wasted. Where I can re-use something I took the time to produce elsewhere, I almost always do, eventually.

My response to Josh became this post, in fact. I hope he got something out of it, and that you did too.

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