"I'm not a writer" (and other lies I tell myself)

Welcome to Writing Wednesday

Seems odd typing that out.
"I'm not a writer," I tell people. And yet here I am, writing to over 50k people every single day across social, the blog and now the newsletter. 👋

You know what's wild? Between emails, posts, Slack messages, newsletters, and AI prompts, I probably write more words per day than most novelists. We all do.

But few of us think of ourselves as writers.

My journey with writing started with embarrassment. I'm sitting at my fancy agency job, proud of landing a role as Head of SEO, when a colleague points out I type like a "drunk T-Rex playing piano." 🍺🎹🦖

Two fingers. Hunt and peck. The shame. Ah, I used my thumb every now and then.

That night, I went home and made an account on typingclub.com. Spent weeks learning proper finger placement, practicing until my hands cramped. Now I average 85 words per minute. Not because I wanted to be a writer, but because I needed to communicate better.

Here's my sequence for getting into writing mode when I need to:

1. Open a blank doc and I write “this isn’t a blank page” this is a habit from my uni days when I hated writing, and my mum taught me this

2. Then I just brain dump. No editing, no judging. Just get the ideas out.

3. Walk away. Make coffee. Let it breathe.

4. Come back and organize those thoughts into something coherent.

5. Read it out loud (this catches so many awkward phrases)

6. Edit ruthlessly - if a sentence doesn't serve the core message, it goes. Thanks John for this one.

The funny thing is, this process taught me something bigger: Writing isn't about being a "writer." It's about being clear. Being understood. Making complex ideas simple.

Every email you craft, every message you send, every document you create - it's all writing. And in today's digital world, writing well isn't just nice to have - it's essential. I truly believe it’s one of life’s most important meta-skills.

I'm curious - what's your writing process? How do you get into the zone when you need to write something important? Drop a comment and let me know.

I’ll give 5 credits on Penfriend to anyone who sends me proof of +100 wpm.

📚 What I'm Reading

Currently devouring "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser for the third time.

I have to thank John Harrison for this one.

It's like that friend who tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Every time I pick it up, I find something new that makes me go "oh, that's why my writing wasn't working!"

My favorite quote so far: "Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can't exist without the other."

That hit different this time around. Especially when I'm staring at a blank doc trying to write something "profound" for a newsletter I decided to write. Turns out, if I can't explain it simply, I probably don't understand it well enough.

What are you reading to level up your writing game?

Penfriend update

The building in public section. Currently taking a moment to write all the BoFu pages we never made. There is a lot. Our "best writing AI software" page is crushing it like a T-Rex at a push-up competition (see what I did there?).

And you know what that means...

We need more. Simple as that.

Using the new BoFu templates in Penfriend to make this a quick job. Getting the relevant edits in there and hitting publish faster than you can say "another-AI-tool-just-launched-while-you-were-reading-this."

The reason why we didn't make them sooner?

I felt guilty not having those pages on the blog if they weren't written by Penfriend itself.

You know that feeling when you're selling chocolate chip cookies but your own kid is eating store-bought? That kind of guilt.

But here's the plot twist - that aforementioned blog post that's crushing it? We actually used it to write the BoFu templates IN Penfriend. So in a weird, meta way, I consider it part of the process. Like we had to build the thing to build the thing that builds the things.

insert Inception horn sound

And now I'm okay with that. Sometimes you need to see something work before you can build the system to make more of it work.

Plus, if we're being honest, watching Penfriend learn from content about itself feels a bit like watching your kid read their own baby photos. Slightly weird, but kind of awesome.

Now excuse me while I go make Penfriend write about itself writing about itself...

✌️Tim "It's Not The Algorithm, It's You" Hanson
CCO @Penfriend

P.S. Taking bets on how many new AI writing tools will launch before I finish this project. Current odds are not in my favor.