For three years I wrote into the void. Twice a week, every week, pretending an audience existed until one quietly did. The thing nobody told me is that publishing is the easy part.
What's hard is the next two thousand decisions. What to write about. How long it should be. Whether to put your best line in the headline or save it. Whether to take a Tuesday off.
Rule one: don't write what you already know — write what you suspect. Suspicion has a heartbeat. Knowledge has been embalmed. Rule two: the first paragraph is a promise; pay it back by the third. Rule three…
...rule four is the one I almost titled this essay after, but I'll save the punch for later. It's about cadence — about why writing 600 words four times a week beats 3,000 once.
And rule five, finally, is the rule that took me longest...