Welcome to the latest issue of Being Curious — a (mostly) weekly newsletter for people who are insanely curious about the world around them.

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Here's what most people think a writer's life looks like:

You wake up bright and early with an idea in your head.
As soon as your pen hits the paper, the writing flows.
Not a word out of place.
Not one error.
Every word you write is gold.
You can head straight to "publish" and you'll go viral.
It's one of the easiest jobs in the world.
I mean, how hard can writing be?

But this is what a writer's life DOES look like:
You spend 30 minutes staring at the screen and another 30 minutes at the keyboard.
You distract yourself by scrolling through your Whatsapp messages because doing that is WAYYY easier than actually writing.
You're supposed to put down some words even if the flow isn't perfect because that's how writing works,
The first draft is never perfect.
In fact, I hate most of my first drafts.
You go back a second, third, fourth, fifth time and refine your work,
This may take hours, days, or weeks,
But you don't give up.
And when you do publish, your writing may not (mostly doesn't) go viral.

But you've CREATED something.
And that's what matters.
Out of all the easy things to do, you chose to write.
You chose to express yourself even if the words may not be perfect.
You ignored those Whatsapp notifications and pushed yourself to write.
This is what writing is.
It's what keeps you sane.
But it's hard.

I've been writing for over 15 years--from poetry to essays to social media content to children's books to video scripts to feature pieces to whitepapers to product messaging.
And oh man!
It never gets easy.
Every piece of content is a challenge.
Ideas don't flow like a river.
But what you keep doing is write.
You persist.
You hit delete a zillion times before you hit publish.
You take a break and then come back and then probably take a break again.

What you finally see is a labor of love, resilience, persistence, frustration, passion and a whole lot more!

Photo credit: Pexels.com

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