No wasted work
Or, what to do with writing once you finish it
Today’s task is to simply free write in order to reflect on the idea of what it means to not “waste” your writing.
One could make the argument that no writing is ever wasted, because simply the act of writing is having done an important thing.
And, that’s not incorrect.
But, also, two things can be simultaneously true, and in this case, it definitely can also be true that the time and effort put into writing something deserves to be rewarded with said writing finding a place to exist out in the world.
So, consider how you might take all of those free writes in your Google Docs or on your laptop, and turn them one at a time into finished pieces and set them free in the world. Some will/should get pitched to editors, some may go to a more self-serve platform like Medium, some might be more suited to being a personal blog post, and, hell, some perhaps really would be best as a Twitter/Mastodon thread. But consider this idea through your writing today, and then set this up like a triage, in order to start putting your work out in the world more deliberately, each move rewarding the effort you invested into creating it, and very likely becoming something of interest or meaning to someone else. Let’s do this.
