Writing more, publishing less

I wrote every day for a hundred days. I published eleven times. That ratio bothered me for about a month and then became the most useful thing I learned.

The draft is the thinking

Most of what I wrote was not bad. It was unfinished thinking that looked like finished writing, which is a much more dangerous thing to publish.

Writing that you do not publish is not wasted. It is the part where you find out whether you actually believe the thing.

What survived

Every piece that made it out had the same shape: I started with a position I held loosely, argued against it properly, and either changed my mind or found the real reason I held it. The ones that stayed in the drawer never got past the first draft’s confidence.