Dec 2 2022
One fear
One fear I have related to this daily writing experiment is that it will discourage me from diving deeper into interesting topics. On substack, I want to write thoughtful, long-form pieces that resonate with people and help them articulate ideas they’ve been grappling with.
For every piece that gets published, there are dozens of ideas that remain unfinished or abandoned. If I publish a short piece here, will that reduce the urgency to craft a more examined and (hopefully) insightful essay?
One of my motivations for writing long-form essays is because there are some topics that I can’t stop thinking about. I talk about them with my friends, think about them in the shower, and craft imaginary speeches to give to an imaginary audience. Writing is a good way to finally articulate and share those thoughts.
Short pieces accomplish 90% of that, but don’t force me to scrutinize and form insights that only come from writing thousands of words. I don’t think that’s a tradeoff I want to make.