My Story of Writing
Like with mathematics, my relationship with writing, both fiction and non-fiction, has always been one-way, I always wanted to be able to write. I wouldn't want to become a full-time writer, but being able to put together a decent story that is engaging to others appeals to me.
I always struggled to do that. Even after lots of practice, my fiction stories would come out crumbled and mediocre at best. Analysing your writing is one of the most bizarre experiences that I have encountered. When debugging code you know that you have to find an issue, something that can go wrong. But in writing, there is no wrong. It's either a decently written story, or it's a complete disaster that needs to be rewritten. I hope that this commitment to weekly blog posts will improve my writing somewhat.
Training your writing is a peculiar thing; the ultimate target is to write a story but that is as vague as saying: "Master mathematics". Answering how to write a story is even harder, there are no exact guidelines to writing, no formula that you can just plug in, you have to figure out how to do this by yourself. Stephen King had a good idea in his memoir. To become a writer is to spend eight hours a day writing, something that he admitted to doing; that is the only guideline you have: write eight hours a day. The rest you have to figure out yourself.
And yet, even with all those difficulties, lots of people manage to create incredible content. There are so many good books that are engaging, and so fun to read. And still no one seems to be able to explain how it is done. There definitely has to be enthusiasm when writing content like this. There is no doubt about that. I can see it myself when writing posts. When I write posts about computer science it is easier than to write about a book. You have to love either the subject you write about, or writing itself. Maybe that is why copywriting, article writing, and such, can feel so fake, because they are made to make money, not to express creativity.