It's difficult because doing it right matters, because stories matter and details matter, and there are often a lot of details. Sometimes it takes years to organize. The feelings, ideas and memories that we put into writing also matter, they are stratified, and we cannot force an understanding of them. Then I sat down to write this post, writing with more awareness of how I was presenting my ideas to others.
People would be impressed when they said they could write a 2000-word essay in not much more than an hour, but what they lacked was how much preparation they had before this moment. When I had to write essays in college, I spent most of my time “planning,” scribbling ideas with pen and paper to figure out exactly what points I wanted to make, and then taking detailed notes on how I wanted to structure and present those ideas.
