Vision’s personal note: Being a writer myself, this article really held a lot of truth for me. Lately due to the pandemic my interest in writing declined but I’m in the process of finding my “inner writing voice” again and that’s why I wanted to share this article with anyone currently struggling with getting back into writing again.

Writing, like running, is often used as an example of operating in a flow state, in which one is deeply focused and performing optimally. Last fall, while in just such a flow state, I wrote a series of short essays about time constraints, venture capital as a team sport, and the lessons I’ve taken with me from jobs in enterprise sales.

But then I stopped writing and haven’t written since. I stopped because I had told myself my next piece would conform to a different style. But because that style was so unnatural to me, I never wrote the piece. The difference was that instead of writing about a ‘soft’ topic, like my previous pieces, I would focus on something ‘hard’ — tech valuations, metrics, evaluating companies, or industry trends. It would be more like the material my peers at other venture firms were writing. If that’s what they were doing, I figured I should do the same. So, head down — a few ideas emerged, but nothing clicked. When speaking or writing for a particular audience, I have an obligation to provide value and insight. But the topics and points of view I was trying to explore all seemed stale or unoriginal.

I realized I was in an anti-flow state. Only later did I come to understand that trying to write something completely inauthentic meant I wouldn’t write at all. In the words of Thomas Merton, “It is therefore, a great thing to be little, which is to say: to be ourselves.

So now I’m writing again, and while I will pen a few “hard” venture capital treatises, I will gravitate toward the lived experience, which is to be myself.

Read the full article here!

Reflection: After reading this article, what tips would you give to an author currently struggling with getting back into writing again?

#Writing #BeOurselves #FlowState