For eleven months last year I wrote and did not publish anything. No newsletter, no essays, no posts. Friends asked if I was ill. I was not; I was trying to find out what I wrote when nobody was waiting.
The first lesson was uncomfortable: a surprising share of what I had been calling thinking was really performing. I had developed a sense, almost a reflex, for the thought that would land well with readers, and that thought had gradually crowded out the stranger, less presentable ones.
The second lesson was that the work needs an audience at some point. By the autumn I missed the particular pressure of being read: the way it forces a loose idea into a shape someone else can follow. Privacy had made me honest and also, a little, lazy.
I came back with fewer opinions and better sentences. I would not recommend eleven months, but I would recommend a pause, and a question to ask during it: who am I writing this for, and do I like them?
