[paulcole]

Believe it or not, most people are worse writers than AI. This is why liberal arts degree programs are valuable. You get this kind of nonsense out of your system early and won’t end up thinking it’s profound and interesting to other people.

[HWR_14]

I find myself wanting to write, but petrified that what I'm writing is banal and I only think it's profound and interesting. I suppose I could write some and show it to someone or mail a sample to a publisher.

[paulcole]

If you want to write, write. The funny thing about writing is that everybody wants to have written but almost nobody wants to write.

If you start writing, it’s going to be bad, but that’s what almost all writing is. If you want to get better, keep practicing, start sharing it with others, get feedback, and repeat. Or show it to nobody and write for yourself.

I studied creative non-fiction writing in college. A big part of programs like that are showing your work to other people then listening to them discuss and critique it without saying anything yourself. You get over the fear of other people thinking your work stinks very quickly — and very quickly you realize your work does stink.

[HWR_14]

I'm less concerned with the craft of writing than choosing a boring repetitive topic. And trying to write a nonfiction piece that no one wants to read subject matter wise.

I fully expect the craft to suck, but I got over the fear of rewriting already. I'm just frightened of producing something that I pretend is profound and everyone else thinks is obvious. That's a totally different fear

[paulcole]

>I'm just frightened of producing something that I pretend is profound and everyone else thinks is obvious. That's a totally different fear

Yes and my point is that what you produce won't be profound and people will think it's obvious. Write it anyway. Or don't.

[HWR_14]

Thanks for the encouragement. In person people are far more likely to tell me not to bother, and I'm not going to pretend it doesn't affect me. I think everyone reacts to their real-life friends' expectations and assumptions.

[paulcole]

I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic or not, but this really is meant to encourage you.

Most people will never write anything and even fewer people will write something good. Nobody who doesn’t write will ever write anything good. If you can get yourself into the group of people who have written something, that’s like buying a lottery ticket where the prize is writing something good. Maybe you’ll buy a bunch of tickets and shorten your odds a bit.

Maybe you’ll just have a bunch of losing tickets at the end of the day. But most people won’t even have those and those kinds of people really like to sneer at people who do play the lottery.

Maybe this is an awful analogy. But if you want to write, that’s your reason to write. I hope you have some fun and find some meaning in it.

[itronitron]

You could just start off writing down your thoughts in order to better understand and explore them.

I consider that very different from writing to communicate to other people though, and a lot of people unfortunately don't make the distinction.

[paulcole]

This is a great suggestion. There’s a quote that’s something like “If you think without writing, then you just think you’re thinking.”