Thread by @patio11

A person on Twitter, paraphrased: "I wish I was able to write as well X but despite going to school and doing everything right, I can't."

Write a million words.

"But they'll be not particularly great words."

If anyone remembered X's first million that's true of theirs, too.

A great deal of what people detect as "good writing" is not technical skill, which is taught in school and improves (somewhat) under a good editor. It is authorial voice: having something interesting to say and the capability to say it in an interesting and unique way.

It is helpful but not required to have readers who can give you a feedback loop on the words you have written, but being cloistered in a windowless room and writing words that only you will ever see is more effective at creating a good writer than anything that isn't writing.

One of the best things that the Internet did for society is that it created spaces which removed artificial constraints on how quickly you could write a million words and gave social permission for writing at any pace.

A not so wonderful thing about school, and one reason why it produces rounds-to-zero good writers, is that it teaches you that work orders come in, words go out, and no words go out except in context of a work order.