Yesterday, I wrote about wanting to hit 1000 words a day in writing. I’m sure some might think, why would you want to do that? I even asked myself. It’s not like I don’t have plenty to do. I’ve got a good career and no shortage of work for my day job. I’m married, and though my daughters are grown now, we still have an active and busy family life. For me, the desire to write more comes down to a few things.
The first thing is that I love writing. Nothing satisifies like spending time crafting sentences that lead me to some new thought. It’s that idea made famous by several authors — Joan Didion and Flannery O’Connor come to mind — that a writer (well, anyone really!) doesn’t know what she thinks until she writes it down. I very much fall into that camp. Writing is thinking for me, which leads me to the second thing.
I want to slow down and spend more time thinking. Writing takes time. Thinking takes time. I’m just so over hustle culture. To combat that pressure to move faster, do more, to hustle, I want to intentionally slow down. Carving out time to write is the best way, and the most rewarding way, for me to do that.
Which leads me to the last thing.
I feel like I am uniquely situated for this present moment where science wants to overtake art, in that I am myself equal parts art and science. I love story, emotion, feeling, and art. I spent the first quarter of my life studying language, literature, and fiction writing. I have also spent years professionally building up skills in programming, math, and science. I reject the idea that we need more STEM and less art. We need both, and so, I want to explore the territory there in the middle. Hopefully, these 1000 words per day will lead to something worth saying in that space.