Writing on demand

Recently, I have been trying out some writing for non-academic purposes, such as writing for the newspaper, for competition, for forum, for editorials, and like I always do, for blogging. These has teach me something called "writing on demand", the ability to command yourself to write and just do it. There is no mood thing, or setting aside a daily time to write thing, it is: I need this now, so I write it now.

This has been liberating in a way. Discovering that writing is not something magical or iffy that you can only do some times and not others, but when you need it, you produce it. It's like driving a car, riding a bicycle or going for a swim, a skill you have mastered, regardless how skillful you are at it, you know it can be counted on to function when you need it.

So yes, writing has changed for me. It has become a skill. And I learned this through exposing myself to different types of writing. For academic writing, you have all the time in the world to write it, a few months? Hence, you can afford to take your time and find time to write. But not for writing for a lay audience, where timing and speed is key.