I hate it here!
As much as I hate to say it, it seems I am a “writer”, hey now, don’t even insinuate I am a “good writer”. You know there are many “not good” writers… Think about it. All the people over time who have decided to pick up a pencil or a stick or whatever and “write”.
Unrelated, since the dawn of LLMs I have a lot more time to write, they can do the heavy lifting. It lets me type. They format the HTML…
This, is just a reflection on the act of writing I guess. To write, we try to capture things? Sometimes, we just write to write. I do it feels like.
I spent all morning writing copy for a clients website. That is billable. Even if I am sure it will all get thrown in the bin. I still can bill and we needed it to show them what needs to kind of, sort of go on the website. Some of it will remain into production. Making me a “professional writer”. As I have been for years by the classical definition.
I have always spent a lot of time thinking about this nuance of web. Writing, at its core that’s all web is, writing with extra steps. I guess you have video, distinct, but still anchored in language.
When you need to write “arbitrarily” as we all have in school I am sure. At least me, it can feel kind of awkward. Who am I to speak on this? Where do I even start? Oh I can just ask an LLM, oh wait he thinks pickles are a form of laundry detergent, this is horrible!
When you need to write on a schedule, its a whole thing. How much effort do you put in? How much do you ask the client for? How much should be in that space? It becomes writing as a trade.
This morning it seemed the winning idea was “create narratives”. Sort of imagine some conversation you would have with the business, as a customer. Form industry specific verbage around a genre of Ethos Pathos or Locos, (See Mrs. Fabery I paid attention!) in a way that is relevant to the specific business/ brand.
You know this is an entire profession “copywriting” don’t be embarrassed if you have never heard of it, and don’t be embarrassed if you are one, I am a “hack” one. It seems to be like “low voltage cabling”, “copywriting” in its essential for every business, but its so abstract it gets thrown in a bin, then people have a hard time even understanding what the complex abstract bin even does!
That is all just #opinion
Writing. I guess it can be a waste of time, but what it does that everyone can agree on is “force a result” as in your plan made sense in your head, but the moment you started to write it down, you see all the holes. Then you re-read and see all the things you can add.
As I write this I go back to 4th grade when I learned how to re-read and look for errors/ contradictions. This mindset is important to me. It feels fulfilling always to refine ideas that you have brought out.
Its simple concepts like these. In the age of 2020s fast paced: click now, buy now, see now. We must take our time to take write it down! In some way!
As I tell people forced to endure my #ramble s “I am lecturing myself! Don’t be offended if I make statements, I am just trying to figure something out”
CONCLUSION
Writing is like cardio for the brain, yeah sure you can do it too much and it gets weird, but a lot of us should do it more, and this is a run on sentence, because like the gym, in my opinion, as long as you go regularly, you are doing something good. Even if you look silly.
