I want to get better at writing articles and stories in Chinese. And the only way to do that is to practice and actually write! Doing things you’re not good at isn’t enjoyable at all. So I decided to start by writing only one article/story/whatever with at least 200 characters every day. My goal was to write 60 of these in two months.

Some problems

Even though writing these would only take about half an hour each day, I still procrastinated and had many instances where I had to write a bunch in one day. Instead of sticking to my plan, I did easier things (practice typing, code, etc.) to avoid doing the hard thing; writing. After three months, I only had 50 or so articles to show. I think the main problem was that I was writing because of my plan (writing one article every day). Not writing for myself, for improving my writing skills. And when you have that mindset, you want to cheat, and to do as little work as possible. This is a mistake I make not just with this project, but with many more as well. Writing this article right now is also part of a project; The portfolio project, and I am trying very hard not to fall into the same trap!

What I learned

I didn’t accomplish my goal of 60 articles, but 50 is still a lot, and I got a lot of valuable writing experience from this project.
I think writing English and Chinese articles share a lot of the same rules and principles. Sure, there are still quite a few differences, but the main idea is still the same. I think this English article I’m writing right now is a lot better than the other ones I wrote a year ago, and this project is part of the reason why!