I’ve wanted to start writing on my own time for a while now. Before I dive into it, I’d like to take a moment to think about why I want to write more. Hopefully that’ll prop me up a bit after I inevitably lose interest that’s the spirit.

I’m a software developer, so I already write a lot. Of course I write code, but that’s not all I write (nor even the majority of my writing). I write reviews of code. I write design documents, investigations, and technical documentation. I work remotely, so most of my communication is written. If I do all of this writing, why do I want to do more?

Primarily selfish reasons

“Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it”

William Zinsser, On Writing well

To be honest, the author’s ego is the main reason I didn’t finish “On Writing Well”

Much as I hate to admit it, most of the reasons I want to write more are pretty selfish.

A major reason is that I want to improve my writing skills. Some of this I can’t do completely by myself (I kinda need an audience and who knows if anyone will actually read any of this stuff), but there’s quite a lot I could learn just by trying. I’ll hopefully find out what I enjoy writing about, at the least. Ideally, I’ll learn a bit more about how to approach writing, to estimate how long it will take me, and a bit about how to edit my own work.

If I’m lucky, writing could also help my career. At the moment I see myself continuing in software development for quite a while, but that could change. Even if it doesn’t, writing is a useful skill (I’d argue the most useful) for a developer. Honing this skill a bit should help me in at least minor ways.

Even if I don’t get much out of this professionally, I think there’s a whole host of other possible benefits. Writing is a creative outlet that shares a lot of what I love about software development: it’s semi-structured, requires very little input except time and inclination, and you can make whatever you want. Writing offers an opportunity to challenge myself, and possibly in a way that I can complete something much faster than in my programming side projects. I can use writing to explore ideas that have intrigued me - I’ve learnt over the past few years that I’m much better at thinking through a problem when I externalize my thoughts.

A slightly different reason I’d like to write more is to capture snapshots of myself. I’m good at remembering certain types of things (often technical details ), but I’m incredibly bad at remembering others. I can’t tell you what I did last Wednesday, never mind three months ago. If I write things down I’ll be able to look back and see what I was interested in at a specific time and remember how I thought. I’ve enjoyed rereading the travel blog that Rosie and I wrote in 2018 and I could maybe get some of that same enjoyment out of old blog posts on other topics.

If you boil down all of those reasons, you could say that I want to write more to boost my ego and make more money. I think it’s more realistic to say that I want to learn more and know myself a bit better bleugh.

Less selfish reasons

I’ve benefited a lot from other people’s blogs over the years. They’ve helped me:

• find the answer to whatever programming problems I’m currently encountering
• think about how I should approach my job
• decide what to cook at night
• work out what to do in the next place I’m travelling to
• … and much more

I can’t thank all of those people - I don’t know who most of them are. However, a bit like hitchhiking, I can try and pay it forward. If something I write ends up helping someone else, I’ll call that a success.

Hopefully I’ll come back to this first post from time to time. Maybe, if I actually stick with this writing malarky, I’ll write a follow up post about what I actually get out of writing a blog.