The Day I Stopped Apologizing for Writing Slowly

Writer at work

If you’re a returning visitor to my blog, you’ll know that there is one post with a good amount of views, one that I’m genuinely proud of having written. Anytime I get a notification that I have a new site visitor, it’s a good bet they’re reading that piece. It was a post about the typewriter revival, a quiet yet passionate movement of writers returning to the analog, rejecting the noise and constant surveillance of the modern world in favor of a more deliberate and committed approach to putting words on the page.

I almost didn’t write it. 

It wasn’t because I had nothing to say. If you know me, when have I ever had that problem? No, it was more about the people who had already said what I was thinking. I’d fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole, watched the California Typewriter documentary, and spent nights listening to writers talking about their machines like old friends. The ideas were there, and so was the enthusiasm. What wasn’t there, at least in my mind, was my right to join the conversation. 

Who the hell am I to be writing about this?

That question plagued me throughout the process. Every word was second guessed. It was like a ghost in the corner of the room, something I could hear but not see as it told me I didn’t know enough, didn’t have enough experience to write about something that had such an active community of knowledgeable people, people who owned these machines and have for years. What could I possibly add to this conversation?

Quite a bit, but it took me a long time to believe that. It took even longer for me to stop apologizing for the time that elapsed.

The Apology Nobody Asked For

Writers are constantly apologizing. We’re sorry for our sporadic posting schedules—or maybe that’s just me. We apologize for long drafts no one ever sees. We agonize over the time to tell a story, not being consistent enough, disappearing for weeks then reappearing like nothing happened. There are little disclaimers at the top of our posts. “Sorry it’s been a while,” we say, as though our readers have been sitting by the window waiting for us, growing impatient. 

I did this for a long time. I still catch myself doing it sometimes. 

These apologies usually come in one of two forms. Sometimes we leave notes for our readers, a small act of transparency about why a post took so long to go live. Other times, it’s internal. Those are the toughest ones. The internal apology is admonishing yourself for wasted time, progress not made. Every day we don’t share something with readers is another self-imposed apology. Every hour, every minute not used to serve our readers is deemed wasted. 

You should be farther along by now, my mind says. You should be more consistent. You should be better at this by now.

Should is a word that cuts like a knife in a writer’s mind. It has nothing to do with the work itself. It has everything to do with our propensity for comparison, whether that be to other writers or to some dream version of ourselves who has it all figured out. We set a pace for ourselves that we think is right because that’s what other successful writers do. We push forward without regard for where the decision regarding pace really came from. 

There was a learning period, a period of slow growth built on failure. Failure came as no traffic, monetization denials, and no visibility. Quantity and productivity trumped quality in the beginning, and my traffic—or lack thereof to be more accurate—reflected that. I had to learn to write at a pace that promoted quality over efficiency. This was not a sign of failure, not an excuse I was making for long waits between articles. It was just reality, the honest truth of how the work gets done.

What the Typewriter Post Taught Me

When I finished the typewriter revival piece, my mouse pointer hovered over the “Publish” button for what seemed like forever. When I finally pressed it, I braced myself for indifference. I expected to see criticism. I’d spent so long agonizing over whether I belonged in the conversation that I expected the reception of the post to confirm my fears that I did not. 

Instead, I watched the view count steadily increase. I do not know if people shared that post after reading it, or how many actually read it to its conclusion. What I do know is that it brought traffic to my blog I did not expect. Though it has tapered off recently, I still get views on that post to this day and have gained visibility in typewriter-related search queries since publishing it. I’d discovered a whole new avenue of content without even trying to, and it has inspired me to continue creating content ever since.

Nobody cared how long it took me to write that article. None of them left comments asking for credentials of any kind. I didn’t need to be anything other than what I am, a writer who had something to say and found the courage to say it publicly and honestly as I could. 

That’s the lesson here. Not that self-doubt and imposter syndrome magically disappear; neither entirely goes away. The moral of the story is imposter syndrome and his friend self-doubt are not reliable narrators. There’s a little voice that tells you you’re not qualified to write whatever you’re working on, that you’re not ready, or not the right person to write a particular piece. I’ll be blunt. That voice you’re hearing is wrong, perpetually wrong, wrong in the oddly specific ways that self-doubt shows itself. 

I find the irony delightful. The article in which I was least confident became the one that opened the proverbial door. I allowed myself to be vulnerable by writing about something that I, by my own admission, knew little about at the time but was passionate and curious about. I joined a conversation in which I thought I had no place and found I belonged after all. I could reach people I was sure were just like me, writers who wanted to reconnect with the history of the craft. I believe that’s why that article landed the way it did.

Slow Writing is Still Writing

Though I’d like to think I’ve done better of late regarding consistency, my posting schedule isn’t where I want it to be yet. There are days, even weeks, in which life gets in the way. Sometimes it’s as physical sickness. Other times self-doubt creeps in and forms some sort of burnt out feeling. When that happens, the words don’t come and forcing them doesn’t produce anything worthwhile. There have been stretches where I go quiet, filling the silence with guilt like the blog was a bill I’d fallen behind on.

I’ve been working on that, and I covered in detail the importance of slowing down sometimes in an article I wrote and published the day before the typewriter revival post went live. I’ll leave a link here if you want to check that out. 

What I understand through writing that post and the one before it is that slow writing is still progress. An irregular posting schedule from a writer genuinely working through something real is worth more—both to the writer and to the audience—than a steady stream of posts that only fill space. Readers can tell the difference. The posts I rushed to meet a deadline that didn’t exist outside of my head feel incomplete when I read them back. The ones I sat with, wrestled with, and asked myself, ‘Who the hell am I to be writing this?” are the ones that stuck. 

Slow and stuck are not the same thing. Taking a break is not the same as giving up. Prioritizing quality over mass production to create something worth reading is not something that requires an apology. 

Permission You Don’t Need From Me—But Here It Is Anyway  

If you’re reading this as a writer who constantly apologizes—both internally and externally—for your pace, output, and consistency, I want to say something bluntly to you: stop it. 

Write at the speed life allows. Show up when you are able. Take the time the work needs. When you’re ready to treat writing like a job, feel free—I wrote about that one too. Check out my Lee Child inspired post here. Until then, let yourself breathe. Stop measuring your success with someone else’s yardstick. Most importantly, don’t let self-doubt and imposter syndrome dictate which conversations you see yourself worthy of joining. 

You write because you have something to say. That’s what it boils down to. Being unsure of whether you belong in a conversation is not proof that you don’t. For most writers, me included, it’s actually quite the contrary. It shows that you care enough and are passionate enough about the subject to take it seriously, which is the exact quality that makes a writer worth reading. 

The article I was most nervous to write is the one that brings people to my blog, and I don’t think that’s an accident. Don’t worry about whether you think you should write or talk about something. If it’s important to you, do it. Take your time with it. Let your passion show through your work, and feel free to reach out to me with questions or comments you may have either via email or the comment section below this post.