Usually when I sit down to write, I have an essay idea in mind, and I’m trying to write it from start to finish.

There are other ways to spend your writing time that can both make the process more enjoyable and improve your output.

1. rewriting great writing

Henrik Karlsson describes this in a comment:

The one deliberate practice thing that I have found valuable is rewriting great writing from memory and compare it to the original - that helps you notice what good writers do that you don’t. It can be done with structure, too.

Here’s an example of Ava’s writing, followed by my recollection of it from memory:

I have spent most of my adult life around people who are used to getting what they want. I don’t mean this in a negative way, necessarily: they’re not pushy people, not aggressive or out-of-touch in a trust fund kid stereotype kind of way. I just mean that they’re golden. Life has smiled upon them: spoils have fallen into their outstretched hands. These people are for the most part smart and kind and as conscientious as you might reasonably be given the rather unconscientious world we live in. Many of them had childhoods and young adulthoods that were far from golden, were in fact very difficult, so they have the mental narrative of having been the underdog before achieving a state of being intensely admired and loved. It’s a heady psychological brew.

I’ve spent most of my life around people who are golden. I don’t mean people who are rich in a trust fund kid stereotype kind of way. I just mean that they’re golden: life has shined upon them. They’re kind and thoughtful and about as conscientious as you can expect people to be given the rather unconscientious world we live in. And most of these people had childhoods or young adulthoods that were not golden, far from it in fact, they had some difficult upbringings. So they have this narrative that they were the underdog before their circumstances changed and they became intensely admired and loved. It’s a heady psychological brew.

This will probably feel bad at first, and I don’t know if it’s immediately actionable, but it does give you better intuition on how your own voice contrasts with that of your favorite writers.

2. many of the exercises from sasha chapin’s course

I haven’t even gone through all of Sasha Chapin’s writing course but it’s already been a very fruitful experience. Here are some of the exercises I enjoyed:

  • write down ten bad ideas for a blog post
  • write down ten bad ideas for a title of the blog post you’ve already written
  • write a shitty first draft quickly

3. character building (if you don’t write fiction)

I struggle enough with writing my actual real life story that the prospect of making up a story feels hugely intimidating, but I have a sense that practicing this would actually make me better at the former.

I tried one exercise in this vein a few months ago: make up a character in your head, and try to describe them in as much detail as possible:

I’m imagining a balding, somewhat overweight white man in his early forties. or no, late thirties. he works at an office job. but he’s reasonably intelligent, it’s not a totally mindless and monotonous desk job – those have all been automated by AI at this point anyway. what kind of work does he do? he does something related to business. he’s not a programmer or technical person. he sits at his desk everyday. you know, it’s not clear yet what he does, let’s explore the other aspects of his personality.

he drives to work every morning – yes, he drives, he doesn’t take the bus. granted, his car is also automated – lol, this is happening in twenty years or so I suppose. or is it really? no, not twenty years. this is happening in five years. the world has not changed that much but language models have become quite mainstream. so this guy is driving in to work every day in his camry. it’s an old camry. he’s not especially well off.

he lives in charlotte, north carolina. that city has popped off quite a bit in the last decade. it’s still not new york obviously, or LA or san francisco, and it’s not even miami, but it’s something. it’s honest work. good people make a good living there. but not our guy – he doesn’t even live in the city proper, in fact, he drives in every day. does he rent or does he own his house? he owns a little bungalow – is that the right word? it’s a very small house, it’s basically a one-floor house with a bedroom, and he does have an old dog that keeps him company, a dog he adopted from foster care a few years ago.

There’s something liberating about this exercise and you might be surprised by how real the character feels by the end of your session.

fin

The point is that you can be much more creative about how you spend your writing time. Here are some other ideas I’ve wanted to try but haven’t yet:

  • put on music and write while standing and gliding around the room
  • instead of writing on paper, just write an entire piece via voice memo and transcribe it