Something interesting about writing every day is that my expectations around the process and the output have changed. And, to be clear, this is neither a good nor a bad thing, just different. Writing every day is quick, almost-but-not-quite stream of consciousness. It's not a premeditated act, and it certainly doesn't involve deep thinking in the way that periodic writing does.
Making this a daily practice generally does seem to scope my mindset to the last 24 hours, and that's what shows up on the page. That's expected. It makes sense. The results are as varied as the daily lived experience.
When I don't write much during the week, I go pretty hard over the weekend, and that's a different vibe entirely. I focus intensely for a while, go away and do something else, and repeat that process until I'm satisfied. I iterate. It becomes a project that I poke at, that I go back to, over and over again.
I spend a lot of time editing, because that's one of the things I enjoy most. Could I have said this better? Could I have made this clearer? I don't know if I'm actually a good editor or not, but the process brings me the same joy that I used to get from coding. There's an element of craft involved that elevates the pursuit and makes it feel rewarding in a creative sense. Actually, I started my academic life as an English major, so it is not at all surprising that I feel this way, even though I was writing HTML long before I was writing term papers.
Is daily writing better or worse than weekend writing? Not really. Daily writing definitely feels less natural right now, but that's probably because I'm fairly new to the idea. Will I continue at this pace after the month is over? I find it unlikely, but I'm not ruling it out.
I haven't made it to the point where vomiting words onto the page feels in any way therapeutic, and (for me at least) that might be prerequisite for maintaining this habit long term. To be honest, I'm not sure if writing helps me process things or not. I'm not a verbal processor. I'm a quiet "think about it for a long time" kind of processor, and that may be why I'm more at home with "slow writing".
The experiment continues! I'll probably revisit this topic at the end of the month to see if my perspective has changed with a little more practice.
~nullish
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