Meta-writing helps me stay consistent with my writing practice

Photo by Andrew Ridley on Unsplash

I do a lot of meta-writing. I write about my writing process. About half of my essays here on Medium are writing-related. I do not write and share these essays because I think I have the best writing advice. I do not write essays about writing because I think others should approach the craft in the same way that I do. Writing is a creative process, and much of the fun comes from building your style — from selecting words to figuring out a workflow.

I write these essays because sometimes those are the words that come out during my writing sessions.

Writing is a way of thinking for me, and often I need to think “aloud” about the writing process itself. These kinds of brain dump writing sessions happen several times a week. I write just about every morning (no, I am not going to tell you that you need to do the same). I would estimate that about one-third to half the time I am just brain-dumping — talking to myself on the screen. The rest of the days I end up writing something that becomes a draft of something else, or an essay that I eventually will share.

These meta-writing brain dump sessions have great utility to me. They serve two main purposes:

1. Meta-writing helps me stay consistent with my writing practice when I do not feel like writing.