Craft
6 min read
Notes on writing in public before you feel ready
Nobody hands you permission. You publish the thing, it is a little wrong, and the next one is a little less wrong.
Written by
Tola Adebayo
For two years I kept a folder called “not yet.” It held forty drafts, a few of them good. None of them were read by anyone but me, which meant none of them taught me anything.
Ready is a feeling, not a milestone
I used to think readiness would arrive the way a train does: on schedule, announced. It doesn’t. It turns up after you begin, usually somewhere around the third piece, when you realise the first two did not end the world.
Publishing early changed what I wrote about. Readers told me which sentences landed. They ignored whole paragraphs I loved. That feedback is impossible to get from a folder.
Start smaller than you think
Send one letter to twelve people. Then do it again next week. The habit matters more than the audience, and the audience follows the habit.
Until next time,