A Year of Writing in Public

A year ago I committed to publishing something every week, regardless of quality. No exceptions for busy weeks, no waiting for a good idea. Just ship whatever version of the thought existed by Sunday night.

I expected the writing to get better fast. It didn't, not for months. What got better first was my ability to tell when an idea was actually finished versus when I was just tired of thinking about it: a distinction I hadn't needed to make when writing was optional.

The thing I didn't expect was how much clearer my own thinking became on topics I wasn't writing about. Explaining something, even to nobody in particular, forces a level of precision that just thinking about it never does.

I also expected an audience to be the point. It wasn't. A handful of people read regularly, and that's been enough: the value showed up in the writing process itself, not in who saw the result.