I’ve been writing atomic essays with around 250 words each and hitting the publish button every day for the last 10 days. It gave me almost all the Twitter followers I have, helpful feedback, and at least 3 lessons:

#1 Trust the process: writing is not an idea turned into finished prose in one take, but a process. The writing process has distinct moments:

• In the ideation moment, the goal is to list ideas with the essential words you need to make an idea into an essay seed;
• During writing, the goal is to make that seed grow as much as possible and as fast as possible. Editing it now will stop writing from growing;
• When editing, mercilessly remove words you don’t essentialy need. Short sentences with strong roots ideas.

#2 People will Like, Reply or Ignore (if they read). Either way is a data point. Either way worth practicing.

Facing writing and publishing through this perspective relieves the pressure of making a perfect essay. The goal is to create a good enough piece so that you have something to collect feedback and learn when people show up.

#3 Clever non-fiction writers create clear headlines. That sounds obvious to me now, but I’ve always thought that the way to go was: “10 essays; 3 lessons.” Wrong. If I had done that, you probably wouldn’t be reading this last line.