As I take a crack at this daily blogging thing, I can’t help but wonder if writing every day just for the sake of writing every day is a waste of time?
Undoubtedly, there will be days where I will have nothing of substantial substance to write about.
Today feels like one of those days.
However, this writer’s block had me thinking…does quantity contribute to quality?
In other words, does writing every day (even when some small or large percentage of said writing is garbled nonsense) help one write better over time?
It seems like a well-established mantra that practice makes perfect, yet there still seems to be some hypocrisy in what we actually believe (i.e. quality over quantity).
But can you actually have quality without quantity?
Does quality just naturally come to us out of thin air?
Does overnight success really exist?
Though these may come off as rhetorical questions, I think most of us would agree that the answer is “no”.
So why do we simultaneously expect quality over quantity if we know we can’t have one without the other?
Is it merely a matter of only sharing our best work, while keeping our worst work behind closed doors?
I personally struggle with this question on a daily basis.
Because I want to be prolific and consistent, but I also don’t want my work to simply take up space and waste others’ time.
Maybe it’s simply a matter of writing every day, but only sharing the work I feel is worth sharing. In theory, this would be a way to balance quantity and quality.
The only glaring problem with this approach is that it can close an important feedback loop.
I want people to know that I’m human, and far from perfect.
Putting stuff out there consistently, regardless of quality, keeps me honest with others, but also with myself.
Having the pressure of public critique (even to an audience that may not exist), is great for quality control purposes.
If I know somebody else may be reading this, I’m going to be more careful about dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s.
So I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I’m not gonna discourage myself from quantity, even if the quality may not be there quite yet.
I think it’s better to just get momentum and consistency before tweaking towards perfect.
I’m using the default wordpress theme at the time of this post’s publication. Who cares? I can address cosmetics later. Right now, I’m more concerned with quantity, because I know quality will eventually follow.
What do you think?