Stop Pretentious Writing:
Recently I downloaded Substack. It’s an all-consuming place where a lot of pretentious people put their thoughts. Anyways, in a perfectly structured article, I read about how this user organizes their thoughts and writes them down in their commonplace book. I have a very multifaceted opinion on organizing one’s thoughts before writing it down so I thought it would be something fun to share.
Do I organize my thoughts? Absolutely not. I don’t even think I look over these entries when I add them onto the website, I just trust my stream of consciousness and decide that’s good enough. This is mainly because this website is for me, not for you. It’s amazing that other people get to see my stupid opinions, but I am not trying to impress you. This is a place for me to write my thoughts and look back on it, like a digital commonplace book of its own.
Even when I was in AP Lang, I never organized my thoughts. If you’re not familiar, AP Lang requires students to write several essays within a time limit in pen. I would fuck off the planning stage and just get into it because writing is what I like, not planning. I’m lucky my teacher enjoyed my stream of consciousness (complete with jokes… I’m not kidding). This really helped me because I stopped putting so much pressure on myself to do well. When I plan, I write much more stiffly. I feel like I need to stick to the plan or else I’m a terrible person who’s stupid and can’t even stick to a simple outline. When I let it go, I feel free to write whatever and however I want. It’s a moment for me to fuck perfectionism and just talk to the page as myself. Writing without planning in AP Lang taught me that I can be more confident in both my writing and my thoughts.
Anyways, back to organizing your thoughts. Substack is inherently a platform used by people to share their writing, which is usually riddled with uselessly long and difficult words to make them sound interesting and are edited to hell and back to be grammatically perfect. STOP IT. I want to know who you are in your writing, not this image you’re trying to force yourself to fit. You don’t have to be a philosophical person to write well, you don’t even have to edit to write well. Personally, I would much rather read a piece of work that is purely in your voice than something that you have run through the ringer time and time again to sound like a perverted version of yourself. Don’t even get me started on organizing that shit in a fucking commonplace book. I feel like everything we do is subconsciously made with sharing it in mind. While I previously stated that I write this website for myself, I do think about the possibility of others viewing it.
Commonplace books are sometimes being used for the sole reason of sharing them on the internet to make someone seem cool and mysterious rather than a place for you to really capture yourself in a specific moment in time. If organizing your thoughts before writing them down in a book no one will see is for you to better take in information, more power to you. If organizing your thoughts is to make yourself sound cooler and more mysterious to other people who could possibly flip through your book, then I think you should try just copying your train of thought down onto the paper. Imagine the book will never be seen by anyone ever and just GO FOR IT.
I want your draft to have YOUR voice in it, not you mimicking someone else's. Self-expression is so important in our lives and I've really been able to help mine through my writing.
BRING BACK FUCKING UP IN YOUR NOTEBOOKS!!
Anyways, that was kind of ranty, but the idea is to eradicate perfectionism with your innermost thoughts. Just let go!! Don’t plan shit out, or make a table of contents. Let each page be a new idea that you’ve had that you can be surprised by the next time you open your book.
Let your thoughts spill out and not force them to be quantified (is that the right word) into a box so you can highlight the top of the page a pretty color. Let yourself go when you write!! Post your free thoughts on places like Substack, but don't get hooked up on needing to replicate Didion or anyone else on the app.