After almost a year of blogging, the blog writing process is still as painful as ever. I’ve concluded that the best medium for me to write in is IM. I can open up an IM window and torrents of good writing will flow out. There doesn’t even have to be anyone else on the other end. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night and pick an arbitrary away friend and dump 800 - 3000 words on them.
Something about how each line is an independent thought by itself and there’s no room for editing makes IM an incredibly liberating platform. The constant feedback and the ability to clarify what turns out to be confusing, the way the conversation sometimes meanders in pleasant ways. It’s just sheer bliss.
Part of the reason I started a blog was because I wanted to share the same ideas with a larger audience but the process is not the same. IM ideas are off the cuff and sloppy, blog posts need to be carefully constructed so that misunderstanding is minimized. It’s just not a medium suited to me.
The reason I’m asking this is because I’m in the middle of building a new tool for my startup which, in part, is the scratching of my own personal need. It’s an attempt to bring some of what I love about all my different communication tools together into one single, uber tool. But before I can design this thing, I would like to know how the writing process goes for other people.
So what do you love to write in? What do you find a necessary chore? I’m interesting in finding out how unique I am.