Reflections on 2024: Writing

Following reflections on this year's reading, it’s only natural to continue with a look at how my writing went in 2024.

Writing goals

On the Writing page, I elaborated on why I want to write in the first place:

To write is to drag your thoughts out of your head and into the real world, and to see if they make sense. Sometimes they don’t, and can be discarded. Other times, they contain a strand of truth. One that you can pull on while writing, and which will lead you to something that makes sense.

This remains my primary motivational driver for wanting to write regularly.

My head continues to be a jarring hodgepodge of thoughts and feelings. Ideas about the future, visions of the past. Things I think I should be doing, reasons why I cannot. Emotions, positive and negative, from somewhere or nowhere. Earned or otherwise.

To write is to pluck a strand of something that lives inside my head and examine it. Does it make sense and should I continue to carry it with me? Perhaps it makes sense, but its weight is not worth bearing. Or maybe it doesn't and it should simply be discarded.

Standing at the threshold of 2024, I didn't set any clear goals for my writing. Instead, I wrote in Aspirations for 2024:

That’s why 2024 will be all about finding balance for me. Because I need to reposition myself, to be able to explore opportunities that come my way and be ready to pounce once it becomes clear that I’ve found a good one.

Writing will be a key part of that exploration. To force myself to fully express half formed thoughts, so that they can be solidified or discarded. And to better understand myself, so that I’m ready to grab my next calling with both hands.

Delightfully vague, yet nevertheless exactly the approach I needed to this year.

How I did

I maintain a directory called "Writing" in which I store everything I produce during focused writing sessions. That is to say when I make a deliberate decision to sit down and write in a focused manner.

At the end of every month, give or take, I run a command in Terminal to count the total number of words across the documents in this directory. Then I log it in a CSV file.

(Thanks to my friend Fabian for helping me with this. I really should automate the action to make sure I catch the numbers. Note to self: That can form the foundation of a "writing log" page on this site, with detailed stats of my writing habits.)

The document reveals that I wrote about 65,000 words in 2024.

Honestly, that's less than I thought it would be. I had a nearly three month long streak of daily writing. Yes, I did fall off the horse afterwards. But I managed to get back to writing regularly in the early fall. Since then, I've maintained the habit.

Yet, 65,000 words over a year equates to only about 5400 words per month. 178 words per day. Not nothing. But, a typical novel apparently consists of between 80,000 to 100,000 words. It certainly gives me a perspective on the amount of work that goes into a novel. And that's the finished product!

Of course, my number doesn't account for edits and revisions. If I begin writing something that I want to continue to explore, and perhaps even turn into a blog post, I will often heavily edit the piece. As an example, the initial draft for my post on my tech stack as of December 2024 was well over 3000 words. The published version ended up at just over 1000 words.

This illustrates why the number of words isn't the best metric for me. It is easy to fill a document with words. To have them make sense is a different thing entirely.

Blog posts

Not everything I write becomes a blog post. But if I write something that I'm comfortable sharing, this is where I publish it. Prior to this post, I have published 50 blog posts so far this year.

They comprise a variety of topics. A quick recap shows the following repeat subjects:

Technology and blogging

• Pluginless dark mode for WordPress full site editor themes
• Exorcising algorithms
• The fediverse and a more interconnected open web
• From Wordpress to Windrunner SSG: Making my own static site generator
• Moving this blog to a new host

Looking back at some of these posts, what strikes me is that they are all exploratory in nature. Writing them is usually a way for me to learn about and clarify my own thoughts about a particular subject. If I present a point of view, it is probably formed during the writing of the post. And highly subjective to change.

I don't know if these posts are useful to anyone else. They are, however, exceptionally valuable to myself as a way of learning and understanding.

Writing

• Day one
• Building a writing habit
• My writing's no good, I'm drinking the wrong kind of coffee
• Reflections from day 75 of writing every day
• Losing my writing streak

When I made writing one of the most important parts of my day, I ended up writing more about writing. In one sense, my more relaxed current approach to writing feels more sustainable. Conversely, I certainly have much, much, much to learn about the craft of writing. These meta posts act as a signal that I am actively working on writing as a craft.

Philosophical musings

• Where did all the grown ups go?
• Craftsmanship and compulsion
• My kind of people
• Halcyon days
• The good old days to come

The most satisfying kind of posts to publish. Probably because so few of the thoughts and feelings I try to express with words end up making sense to the extent that they can be shared at all.

Book review-ish posts

• The Will of the Many by James Islington
• Victory City by Salman Rushdie
• The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson
• The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov

Referring to these as "reviews" was a mistake. My intent was to share some quick thoughts on every book that I read this year. But the word "review" carries certain connotations. Before long, I found myself thinking that these posts needed to follow a certain structure, contain specific elements. It didn't take long before I found myself falling behind, and the last one — published in June — was about a book I read in March.

A reminder that the names we give things matter. Originally I wanted to call these "Book notes" or some such. Seeing as they are posts and not notes, however, I thought that might be cause for confusion.

Haven’t figured out a more appropriate label that avoids this. Suggestions welcome!

Other writing

Throughout the year I wrote a lot more than just the words I penned during my focused writing sessions. For one, I write a lot of emails. How many? Who knows. That question is akin to asking how many words I spoke in 2024.

Short posts and links

Another example are the 350 or so notes I shared on this site in 2024.

I treat these notes as microblog posts. A majority are links to awesome content from around the web that I think you should check out. (Some thoughts on why I do this here). The rest are short posts that I want to share without fleshing them out into something that fits the generally more extensive format of a full post.

Writing at work

My day job also consists of a whole lot of writing. Much of it is pure communication. There is also a fair bit of note taking for learning and documentation, information sharing and similar. That part escalated after I switched to a new role in August. So much, in fact, that I felt it necessary to transition from Onenote to Obsidian for better control of my writing. Perhaps a topic for another post. Though I generally try to avoid writing about work here.

Then there are my various piles of notes scattered all around. Some in the Apple Notes app, others in a cloud folder (because I prefer the purity of plaintext files) and others still in physical notebooks around the house.

I don't consider these activities writing in the sense that I'm discussing in this post. They do benefit greatly from the time I spend being intentional about my writing. It helps my writing flow more easily, formulate myself in more precise manners and generally just increase the quality of all that I write.

Learnings for the future

When I sit down to write it is easy to follow the path of least resistance. That means writing technical posts, how-to-posts and posts of self improvement. I could probably smash out one of these every day.

Take better notes

Publishing posts that start out as more abstract thoughts is more rewarding. To formulate thoughts into words that make sense, even to someone else, feels like a real achievement.

I want to write and publish more of these. That probably starts by paying more attention to what's swirling inside my head. Which, in turn, probably necessitates a more structured approach to taking notes.

Reflect on what I read

Book notes are something I want to give another shot. I really feel that I should have a couple of paragraphs on every single book that I read. That requires staying on top of these and not falling behind like I did this year. Being more active and scribbling down notes as I'm reading will probably also help. By reducing the cognitive burden of trying to digest the entire book at once to be able to jot down a few paragraphs upon finishing a book.

Create stories and worlds

Lastly, I want to try my hand at writing fiction. For years I've carried this premise for a story around in my mind. In fact, wanting to put it to the page was one of the reasons for making writing — the craft of it — a priority over the last few years. In turn, this culminated in my attempt to make writing a daily practice.

It is time to bring this dream one step closer. That means writing stories. When I do and eventually manage to craft something I'm comfortable with sharing, you'll find it here.