Meaningful Writing — Lessons from John Muir

Like many of you, I’m not only tired of the same regurgitated “10 writing tips” that rotate through our feeds every week that somehow manage to say nothing with as many words as possible, but I’m also concerned with how predatory these sorts of “guides” and “tips” can be on insecure writers who are having trouble starting out without a solid support group of their own.

Beginning your journey as a writer is daunting — you have endless examples of monolithic writers and figures who came before you in any genre you can imagine that you can’t help but compare yourself to. To you, your idols are perfect writers, and you aspire to be like them. While it might be this admiration of them which compels you to write, everything you churn out ultimately disappoints the enormous expectations you’ve placed on yourself through that admiration.

This is the stage of the journeyman writer that I believe is most susceptible, and impressionable, to “writing tips.”

The problem with writing tips, or most blog posts that try and lend a hand to struggling writers, is that they try to boil writing down to a science. “Write x words a day and you’ll be good I promise” or “write every day if you want to succeed” — ideas that are completely detached from the lived reality of most writers who still manage to make a living. These equational and…