Episode 106: Writing Time is Sacred Time
Summary
Nick and Kai argue that the real goal for freelancers is publishing consistently, not just writing consistently, and that building a writing habit is only useful insofar as it gets you there. They walk through their individual routines, Nick’s editorial calendar approach and Kai’s switch to daily letters, and make the case that writers routinely misjudge which of their pieces will land. The episode ends on unsubscribes: why inviting people to leave is a feature, not a risk.
Highlights
- Nick keeps an editorial calendar 2 weeks to 2 months out depending on workload, writes for 2 hours each morning before lunch, and produces roughly 1,000 to 1,500 words per session. Client and design work fills his afternoons.
- He leaves 1 to 2 free days per week as buffer. A bad night’s sleep or a travel day pushes writing there instead of into a missed deadline.
- Kai switched from weekly to daily letters at 750 to 1,000 words each. Publishing that frequently made him comfortable shipping pieces that aren’t his best, since it’s mathematically impossible for everything to be in the top 20%.
- Kai’s ‘you-focused language’ article (kaidavis.com/yo) was written in a rush just to meet a daily deadline. It became one of his most popular pieces of the year. His point: the gap between what a writer thinks is good and what readers respond to is wide and largely unpredictable.
- Kai names the catch-22 he sees repeatedly with coaching students: they want to find their voice before publishing consistently, but you only find your voice by publishing. His advice is to start publishing regardless of quality and delete the bad stuff later if needed.
- Nick told his mailing list to unsubscribe in the first sentence of an email if they weren’t interested in his next book. Eleven people left. He reads that as confirmation his message is landing with everyone who stayed.
- Both treat unsubscribes as a filtering signal. People who choose to stay after an open invitation to leave have actively confirmed they want to keep reading.
Read the transcript
So, I read a post last week on a bad website called Medium. com. That was, it was the kind of genre of post on the bad website. that rails against the wrongheadedness of other posts on the bad website. And one of them was this like very like rail against the productivity people. Like there was this like death to product Activity thing, and they said that you don’t need to write a post that’s a thousand words about how you write a thousand words every day. And the problem is that I agree with that. I actually think that’s a really dumb thing to be doing because it gets in the way you shouldn’t have to brag. Look at me, I do this thing. You should just let your actions and deeds Stand in for the thing because otherwise you get these like low vibration wantrepreneur type people, right? You get these people that are like, oh man, this person can write every day. That’s great. But that’s like not You could write garbage every day and it’s not useful, right? But then you’ve written every day and you’ve fulfilled the wishes of the entrepreneur. People who care about productivity for its own sake. I would rather just do the thing, right? And so, when I talk a little bit about the idea of writing consistently, which is the topic of this episode I’m always a little hesitant about it. Are you? Like, I don’t know. How did you feel about this?
I’m very much in favor of it because I think making the clackety clack noise, writing consistently is something people need to do. And I think Even if it’s garbage, getting in the habit of 20, 30 minutes a day, sitting down, producing garbage, you’re going to eventually produce better garbage. You’re going to eventually produce not quite garbage. And then you’re eventually going to produce some good things. And it’s going to take time to do it. But I agree with you that. It could be a little masturbatory at times to talk about writing. It reminds me in the worst case examples, it reminds me of people like blogging about quitting Twitter or tweeting about quitting Twitter continually while they’re quitting Twitter. It’s like What exactly is going on here?
I’m really leaving now. Bye. And everyone is like, what are you?
Here’s my 14-part essay on quitting Twitter that I have tweeted out to you automatically. Please enjoy it. Thank you. Welcome to 2011. Right, right. But I think there is importance in cultivating a writing habit because cultivating a writing habit makes it easier to cultivate a publishing habit. And when I think about the topic of this episode, Writing consistently. In a sense, really, the valuable thing you, dear listener, need to be doing is publishing consistently. Because if you write 10,000 amazing, wonderful articles, or one amazing, wonderful article, but never actually publish it. Nobody knows about it. You sort of have lost. You haven’t done the thing. But if we start talking about publishing consistently, we run headfirst into the problem of, well, I don’t have a writing habit. I’m publishing once a year. What do I do? So I think there is a necessity to talk about writing consistently in as much as it sets you up to publish consistently. Am I explaining that well?
Yeah, I think that makes sense. And I mean, I made a Parallel to this probably 85 episodes ago with that one art website, The Jogging, right? Where there’s this idea of always putting out something so that you’re always engaging with people. And so we’ve talked about the idea of maintaining the momentum of publishing. And for me, that actually is the lever that forces me to write consistently. And I really don’t write consistently because I’m in a situation right now. I fly to Japan in five days as of the recording of this podcast, right? And before this, I had my Christmas break, and so I was out basically for a month continuously. So I spent a really long time Simultaneously building up a ton of writing to be dribbling out over the course of January. Like January’s writing, the things you’re going to be seeing from me in January, they’re all done. They’re all ready to go. And you have that. But also, you have 10 days of downtime where I’m in my pajamas in Charlotte hanging out with my in-laws and watching people, you know. unwrap their Christmas presents and do all these things, or I’m going to be like walking around a bunch of Shinto shrines and pretending like I know what I’m doing. And all of those things are There are these long punctuations in between these spates of work, right? Now, to you, dear reader or listener, if you subscribe to my mailing list, first off, I’m so sorry.
What is that URL for your mailing list? Draftsletters. com.
But if you have the grievous misfortune of reading my mailing list on a consistent basis, all you need to see is a new thing every week, right? That’s it. And you don’t see the process that goes into it, where I might be writing three letters in a day, putting down my proverbial pen. I definitely write these all by hand and pen. No, I don’t. Scan it in, email it to Kelly. Dear Kelly, hell no. But I, you know, I do all these things, and then I go and like work on client work and do all of this. And so, like, there’s a. Big, big difference between like what you see as far as the proverbial jogging and What it is I’m actually doing, you know, where this is a very dramatic example of that, but I don’t think it’s Too uncommon. Like, there will be times when I’m just writing a lot. And so, what I have, this is going to get into the point where I have like actual helpful advice for people for once. I set up like an editorial calendar and I plan it out basically as far as I feel that I can actually have a handle on it, right? So if I’m bonkers with work, that calendar might expand out a little bit. And at its minimum, it’s usually like two weeks. At its maximum, it’s like two months. And I may not have topics necessarily. There may not be a narrative around it or like a consistent connection. But I know I have to have this many installments. I just do the math. This many revised weekly installments, this many draft analyses, which, by the way, that ends in three weeks and then I hike the price. And this many letters to write and like this much of the publishing calendar, right? This is how much I have to do to actually meet my deadlines. And we’re going to talk a little bit about scheduling in the next week of the podcast, so stay tuned for that. But it’s. You’re planning out your time and making sure you’re getting ahead of it, right? So that you actually feel comfortable and safe with what it is you’re actually doing. And then I take that and I start scheduling out my mornings. So the thing that I have decided is that writing time is sacred time in the morning. And I don’t know, a bit flips after I have lunch every day. I don’t know what happens. It’s just this really weird thing where, like, I can’t even remotely consider working after I’ve had my lunch. Okay, well, knowing that constraint, how do I actually respond to that? How do I plan it out? Well, in practice, that means that I’m going to be. writing probably about two hours, so I get probably around a thousand fifteen hundred words, something like that. And that’s what I do every day. That’s why revised weekly lessons are usually around 1,000 to 1,500 words. That’s why my letters usually top out around there. It’s like, you know, that’s when I’m getting really Really busy with it. And then in the afternoon, I focus on client work and design work. Now, sometimes this is fungible, like a disaster might happen or something like that. Okay, I push it out another day. So I’ll leave like one or two free days in my week where I’m not doing anything. So I can shift my writing there if I’m having an off day, I slept crappy, I, you know. um I had to travel or something like that. Um you want to make sure that you’re offering enough overhead in your schedule to make sure that it’s actually worth Your time. If you don’t do that, you’re going to be writing too frequently, and that’s going to suck for you, right? Like, it’s better to turn out 6,000 words with a lot of air gap than to plan. For 15,000 words and do 6,000 words and feel a lot of shame about it, or worse yet, not be able to fulfill your professional commitments. That would suck horribly for you, right? I also include like doing reports for my clients in this. So, if I have to call a draft revised report, that’s writing. It’s the same part of my brain. If I have to write a huge research deep dive, I have to schedule that, and that cuts into writing time. I think that’s the overall description of my writing routine. I’m sure it’s very different for other people, but the goal is that you find something that works for you.
Here’s a question. How do you track potential topics or topic ideas?
So I use a to-do list manager. The name of it doesn’t matter. And I have a bunch of projects where I. Keep all of my topics, and I have the various things that are under these projects that are drafts, letters, revised weekly draft analysis. And I just draw down on them. And when I feel like I’m not excited by a topic, I check it off and I don’t write about it. When I feel like there are very few topics, I make a to-do in my list to sit down without a computer. And I actually, with pen and paper, brainstorm new topics. And I have to do that without a computer, and I don’t know why. It’s just a thing. But yeah, that’s pretty much it.
For me, it’s slightly different because I have the daily letters. Those are around 750 to 1,000 words each day. I’ve been lucky that over the last year and a half, more and more of my business has transitioned to writing, which isn’t wonderful because in college I wanted to be a writer and somehow I magically ended up Writing a lot, and woohoo, that’s great. My daily cadence is similar to yours. Morning time is the easiest time for me to write, but If I feel inspiration or the urge hit, I’ll write at any time during the day in the evenings after I close for business. I wanted to write. An article about a Burning Man thing at like 9 p. m. a couple nights ago, and so I just sat down and started writing it. And an hour later, I had 2,500 words about this Burning Man thing, and I was like, awesome, this is great. What I Have discovered is the more frequently I exercise that writing muscle, and switching over to writing daily emails helped a lot with this, the easier it has become for me to create new letters, write new things, generate that content. And by publishing more often, by switching over from a weekly publishing cadence to a daily publishing cadence with the letters, it’s made me more comfortable publishing something that is closer to average. Before I’d often get stuck in the trap of feeling, well, This isn’t in the top 20% of articles I have ever written, so I should never publish it. It’s impossible for everything I write to be in the top 20%. Math does not work that way, dear math major friend I host this podcast with.
Yeah, no, there’s a distribution, right? Like, just to cut in for just a moment, like You’re gonna drop bricks when you’re writing. And it may be the cracked-out thing is that there’s a mismatch between what you think sucks and what other people might think is useful.
And I’ll tell you a specific example of that. I have an article on my site about you-focused language. Readers could find that at kai davis. com forward slash yo. This was an article I put together in a rush sitting in my favorite coffee shop. At the end of the day, I just needed to get a daily out, and I was like. You know what? I’m shipping it. I wrote the words. It’s good enough. And people loved it. And it’s become one of the more popular things I’ve written in the last year. And you’re absolutely right. There is a mismatch between what You, you, dear listener, as a content creator, as a writer, think is wonderful or terrible, and what your readers think is wonderful or terrible. You might publish an article and think this is going to be the best thing ever. Crickets. You might publish an article and be like, I’m just shipping the thing. And suddenly everybody’s like, this is amazing. Write more about it. And it’s really, really hard to know from your side of the writing desk which it will end up being. All you really can do is try to have the average move up over time. Review your past work, see what people have reacted positively to, write more like that, write more about that, ask people what they want to read more of you writing about. And over time, what I found is as you do that and as you write and publish more consistently, the average quality of your writing goes up, which kind of makes sense. It’s like going to the gym. You go to the gym for a year, you lift weights for a year, you’re able to lift heavier things. You write consistently for a year, you’re going to be a better writer since you’ve been practicing for a year.
Yeah, the end goal. With it, it’s not just being a better writer, it’s being more you when you are writing. It’s breaking down the like psychological barriers between the person and the expression of the idea. And people usually call this, quote, finding your voice, end quote. Whatever you want, you get more of your voice coming out the more you write, and the That’s what ends up that’s a direct correlation with better writing, right? Any sort of quality evaluation that could possibly happen within writing. And I think there is something to the idea of sort of chipping away at what is working and what isn’t working. And you’re not going to know it’s not working if you don’t push yourself a little bit and try. And it is an act of vulnerability. To consciously think this is garbage and still put it on your mailing list.
Yes. Yes, it is. And it’s a necessary act. It’s the only way to truly get better. Just like in. Any hobby, any sport, anything you do, there will be days where you show up and you’re like, this is not my best work, but you’re still going to go out there and play. You’re still going to do that thing. And when it comes to writing and when it comes to publishing and creating this type of content, Even if it isn’t your best work, it’s important to put it out there because, as we said before, you aren’t going to be the person who could best judge that. And It’s important to develop that habit of hitting publish, of getting it out there, of moving on to the next thing. What I’ve discovered over time is when I hesitate to publish something or when I just let it sit there. Suddenly, I have 10 things sitting in drafts waiting to be published, and suddenly that acts as a barrier to me publishing more things. So, as I get more consistent about publishing it, even if it isn’t perfect, even if it isn’t wonderful. It makes it easier for me to move on to the next thing and not suddenly feel like, I’ve got these 10 different things I need to finish up with. There’s a wonderful psychological principle for this. It starts with a Z that I’m completely blanking on about how We feel a large amount of a negative emotional attachment to things that we start but never complete. And I think Drafts that get stuck there and never published really, really tie into this. We feel a sense of longing, of guilt, of attachment, I haven’t finished this thing yet. If we write it, but then don’t publish it. Better to publish it, get it out of the way, and then be able to move forward and write another thing the next day.
Yeah, that psychological thing that starts with a z. I think it’s a z shame.
I don’t know if that’s making a joke or not.
I am making it. God damn it, Kai.
But the important thing is. I’m not letting it end there. Okay. P. S. , everybody. Is there anything else to add? I guess the thing I see most with freelancers and consultants I work with and people I coach is a desire to publish more, but a hesitation around publishing more. This is the best guess on my part. And please email me at kai at kai davis. com if this matches your experience or doesn’t match your experience. But it seems like there’s a There’s sort of a catch around. Hey, I want to find my voice. I want to be more authentic and vulnerable in my writing. But until I get those two pieces sorted out, I can’t write and publish consistently because I haven’t found my voice yet, and suddenly we’re in a catch-22 situation. I can’t find my voice without publishing. I’m not going to publish without finding my voice. The recommendation I always have for my coaching students is: get consistent about writing and publishing. Doesn’t matter if it’s great, doesn’t matter if it’s terrible, doesn’t matter if it’s Off the mark from your target market. If one of the things you want to accomplish is publishing more and writing more, start there. Over time, by writing more, you’re going to find your voice. Maybe a year down the line, you’re like, you know what? I published 40 things in the last year. 29 of them are absolutely shit. You could delete them from the internet. That’s a wonderful, magical thing that blogs allow you to do. Your writing doesn’t have to be there forever.
Yeah, I think there’s. To go a little deeper on that, I think there’s something to like people believe it’s a risky move to publish because what? People unsubscribe from your mailing list, right? Or people seize on you for some reason. There’s a lot of fear in that. The consequence is that you don’t write. But if you do write, and people unsubscribe that weren’t interested in what you do or who you are. I would actually argue that’s kind of a good thing because I would rather be a weirdo polarizing person. I actually this week just encouraged my Mailing list to unsubscribe if they don’t care about the things I’m about to write about in my next book. I literally, in the first sentence, told them to unsubscribe. And like I think that the practice of writing and keeping up the practice of writing doesn’t have to be an explicit like. Encouragement to unsubscribe, right? But it’s definitely a like chiseling away at the size of the audience to find your kindred spirits. And if you are not courageous enough to do that, you need to figure out a way to get courageous enough to do that. Right? Like, that’s the challenge about it, because it’s not about It’s not about hedging on risk all the time when you have all of this, right? I think that fear drives it, right? I think it’s more about making sure that you’re comfortable with people being like, this isn’t for me, you know? And that’s okay. Like it’s you think that things aren’t for you all the time. Every time you make a decision to like not go to a new movie that comes out or not buy a book on Amazon, you’re finding things that aren’t for you. Right, and sometimes they can be things that are recommended really fervently by other people. You know, you still are trying to make that sort of valuation, and other people are doing it about you, and you need to be comfortable with that. That’s kind of what I’m getting at, I think.
I think you’re absolutely right that it’s somebody saying that they don’t want to read your writing anymore is not necessarily a rejection of you, dear listener, dear writer. It’s more than just saying, hey, you know what, I want to get off this train. And it doesn’t need to be a negative thing at all. It’s just somebody saying, oh, you know what? I just realized I’m not part of your target market. I don’t want to waste any more of your time or bandwidth by being on this list. I’m just going to hop off here. And great, you’re left with the rest of people to talk with. It’s not a negative, it, in a sense, is a positive signal.
That’s absolutely true. I actually while we were just talking went on drip and for like the first time in years looked at the numbers on my mailing list to see how many people unsubscribed from yesterday’s email. Where I told them to unsubscribe. Would you like to guess the raw number of unsubscribes, Kai?
I think it’s 69.
It’s not 69. Damn it. I know, I know. It is 11.
Well done.
11 people left. 11. Here’s a psychological thing. You’re lost, yo. Like, that’s fine. It’s not for you. Anyway, go on.
I’m sorry. Well, the interesting psychological thing I like here is by inviting people to unsubscribe in that fashion. The remainder of people, everybody who are not those 11 people, have essentially said, Yes, I am interested in the content here. And this starts to build up in their heads. They are They’re acknowledging to themselves, oh, I enjoy the content. Oh, he’s invited me to unsubscribe. No, I want to stay on here. It builds a stronger relationship between you and the people reading your writing.
Yeah, yeah. Like, I tell you, there’s not 12 people on my mailing list, right? Like, there’s a lot of you. I look at the 11 unsubscribes and I think, like, oh my God, my message is landing. Right? Like, either that or everyone has flagged me as spam. One of those two things is true. And it’s probably not the spam bit, you know? Like. It’s probably a bunch of people like I’ve probably spent enough time carving away the contours of my mailing list such that I can be a gigantic weirdo. My, I tell you, my assistant, when I sent her the email to queue up, she replied back with the like nail care, like nail polish emoji about it. Because that’s what it looks like. And honestly, be the nail care emoji on your mailing list. And don’t let it go cold.
Notes
- What do our writing practices look like?
- How did we get started writing?
- How should listeners work on building their 'writing muscle'?
- Is it necessarily to write daily?
- Should you just write? Write and publish?
- Andrew Chen on Writing and Blogging
- Robin Sloan on "Stock and Flow" as it applies to the writing / publishing process
- Nick's Newsletter
- Kai's Newsletter