Jude Shingle

So, what will it take to be a better writer?

Reflection
Learning happens in reflection. When you get feedback and work through it, you grow. That means going back and re-writing old posts, dedicating time each week to review what worked and what didn’t, and even using AI as an educational proofreader. In other words, make writing a loop—not a straight line.

Collecting
Interesting ideas don’t appear out of nowhere. They come from intentionally searching for them, taking notes on small observations, reading broadly, and talking with new people. Collecting observations gives me raw material to connect the dots in new and surprising ways. Without the habit of intake, the output will be bland.

Defining My Audience
When I started this blog, I invited 10 people to read it—people I thought might be interested, and who I kept in mind while writing the first posts. But if you pressed me now to describe my target audience in any real detail, I’d struggle. At first, that didn’t matter. My first goal was to build a daily practice. Now, though, I see the difference between writing for myself and writing for others. And the clearest sign I’m reaching others is if they share my work.

I have 7 loyal readers, but the audience isn’t growing. That tells me I need to do a better job of understanding who I’m writing for—and how to make the writing more useful to them (you).

One of the best pieces of advice I received early on was simple: sit down and write every day. Even if you’re stuck. Even if the words aren’t good. The point isn’t brilliance—it’s habit. Eventually, your body learns what to do and just writes.

My practice is 30 minutes each morning at my drafting table. I flip open my iPad, start a new Word doc, and begin. Sometimes, to avoid the blank page, I type “good morning.”

At first, the challenge was speed—getting a full post drafted and edited in 30 minutes felt impossible. Most days it took me an hour or more. Over time, though, my process got faster. On good days, as quick as 15 minutes. By the six-month mark, I knew without a doubt: give me 30 minutes, and I can get a post out. The anxiety eased, too. Writing became less like a test and more like visiting a friend. I could sit with the discomfort of not knowing if a post would work.

The daily publishing deadline is what made the shift happen. The constraint of 30 minutes trains your brain to complete a thought in the time you have.

But that constraint has limits. Some posts come out half-formed—missing the right story, tangled in structure, weighed down by clumsy word choice. Any number of things that, with more time, could make the writing more potent, more distilled, more helpful.

The practice has made me consistent and comfortable sharing ideas. But it hasn’t, on its own, made the writing good.

We are approaching the one-year anniversary of starting this daily blog.

Lately, it’s been less than daily.

I’ve been hesitant to share why. My instinct is that you’re here for content that’s useful to you, not a diary of what I’ve been up to.

But my relationship to this blog has changed, and sharing that feels important. A stronger instinct tells me that reflecting on this openly might be helpful to you, too.

So over the next few days, I’ll write about what the past year has taught me, how my practice has shifted, and where we might be headed next.

can feel like:

This has to happen or else…
I know what should happen and when.
If I don’t control this now, everything will fall apart.

But it can also feel like:

I’m going to do this, even though I’m afraid.
Last time didn’t work out, but I’m trying again.
I don’t know the answer, but I’m open to figuring it out.

When your urgency demands certainty, it closes the door.
When your urgency insists on showing up, it leaves the door open for change.

We use the same words to describe different things.

How was your day? “Good.”
How was the show? “Good.”

How are you feeling? “Fine.”
How’s the project going? “Fine.”

How was your food? “Salty.”
How is Mary feeling? “Salty.”

Details are what make today different from yesterday—what make this experience different from all others.

But getting those details can sometimes feel like pulling teeth.

“What do you see that makes you say that?”
“Tell me more.”
“Say more about that.”
“What else?”

These are questions that bring out details.

What action do you take when holding conflicting points of view?

In the wake of tragedy, we’re capable of feeling sadness, remorse, anger, hope, and relief—all at once. Expressing those feelings can be complicated. It’s simpler to choose one side, to believe that’s the only way through.

But either–or is a fool’s choice. Dialogue creates a middle ground. It takes courage to hold both hot and cold at once.

A kind of certainty, I suppose. A winning lottery ticket. The perfect-weather day for your wedding. The chance to avoid a highway car crash.

But it also brings unavoidable pain. You’d see every illness, every piece of unexpected news, every relationship struggle—and you wouldn’t be able to change any of it.

Even without knowing the future, there’s still certainty.
The uncertainty we feel is: what if things don’t go as planned?
The certainty is: the unexpected is bound to happen.

Will you show up anyway?

You can wait and see what new details emerge. I love this strategy because it often challenges your assumptions. Waiting isn’t doing nothing—it’s watching, learning, and checking if the landscape is what you thought it was.

You can be decisive and make peace with the choice, knowing it’s the best decision you can make in this moment, even if the outcome isn’t what you wanted.

Avoidance—not wanting to feel uncertainty—is another option. It’s sneaky, because you can convince yourself you’re waiting, when in reality you’re hiding. Or you can double down on a bad choice just to avoid admitting you were wrong.

Uncertainty is fine. Still, you have a choice.

A toxic environment is livable—just not long-term. You can either leave the environment or do the hard work of removing the toxin.

Mistakes are decisions. You need to make decisions to go forward—and everyone is going to make the smart decision only to have undesirable outcomes, from time to time.

How the toxin got there could have been a mistake. And so choosing to live with the toxin while you clean it up feels like re-living the mistake over and over.

Let it go. A mistake isn’t permanent—it’s only repeated if you refuse to choose again.

…and, Canva defaults the alignment of any new text box to center.

This means, anytime I am designing in Canva, I need to change both settings.

But most people won’t.

The power of a default is that it is the standard for the vast majority of people.

Canva, as a platform, sets what the default is. To change what the default is, you can either petition Canva to change, or become the dominant platform and set your own standard.

What won’t work, is me screaming from the rooftops that every user should use a line height of 1.2 instead.