One of my old Medium posts, “The power of your writing” has been blowing up in traffic again, thanks to the official Medium accounts re-sharing it again:
“Why you should write even if you think nobody is reading” —@wynlim https://t.co/O2NEWIrfsZ
— Medium (@Medium) September 15, 2014
I wrote it over year ago, and it was the only post I have written in probably my entire life that took more than a day to write. I have written intense posts that take six to seven hours in one sitting, and the thing is I don’t actually like writing in more than one sitting. I like sitting here and just letting my thoughts flow into my hands and transform into the written word. Obsessive editing and agonizing over presentation is really not my thing.
But this post was special. It took me hours to write the first draft, and I let it sit for two weeks, before editing that first draft heavily. It is the only post I sent to multiple people for feedback (including a real writer – thanks @verbagetruck!).
It meant a lot to me back then, it still means a lot to me today. I took it upon myself as a personal mission to make more people take their writing seriously, and I in turn took my mission very seriously.
Yet that post took so much out of me, that I never really wrote a post like it again. I went back to writing posts straight from my heart and onto the screen without putting a filter in between. Most of the time I am really just wanting to write for myself. So this may strangely be the only post that I would ever write that could carry this sort of resonance and impact:
I read @wynlim's post 'The power of your writing' http://t.co/6EuYZt6bJp Inspirational. So I paid homage and wrote. http://t.co/6A4gQ38LwP
— G U S (@TheBoyGeniuz) September 15, 2014
Words have this magical way of being in existence. They will find their way to people who need them, at the most uncanny time. Our job is just to write them out and let the universe distribute their power. I knew this is one of the posts I had to write and it was worth the time, and I am thankful that it reached people the way it was intended to be.
I still feel warm fuzzies whenever I receive notes or tweets on the impact of this post and it serves as the best affirmation of the power of words to myself – why I truly love writing and how it has thoroughly transformed me.