Inside My Writing Process

When I finally built a system for hosting every single writing idea that came to mind, I opened a floodgate of thoughts. Already an overthinker, with sobriety adding even more space for my mind to wander, officially treating myself like a writer means I’m writing in my head constantly. Then, I need to find time to put those thoughts on paper. One idea leads to another, and another, until I finally sit down to write, and the multiplication continues.

An idea is always a starting point, but never the end point. I don’t know what I’m going to end up writing, even when I start with a clear idea. To shed some light on how exhausting and fulfilling this process can be, I’ll let you in on the making of an essay, one that took almost four days to write.

The idea was straightforward: Write a Substack post on my Top NYC Restaurants of 2025. I opened my restaurant rating spreadsheet and filtered by my top rating, Gotta Have It. Time to write!

What do I mean by Gotta Have It? Well, I have a custom rating system that I devised while riding a ski lift in Vermont on my very first ski trip. Perhaps I should write about my rating system first. Before that, I should write about my first ski trip, a transformative experience that taught me a new skill, gave me a place to grieve, and helped me come up with this rating system. Maybe I should write about grief, and how important nature is when grieving. Maybe I should write about my relationship with nature.

Over 3 hours and 3,000 words later, I had written about everything but the top restaurants of 2025! I could have backlogged these ideas for later. But the only way out is through, or so I’ve heard many people say. I had to work through those other ideas to get to the main point, even if I would ultimately keep those essays locked away (but you know I wouldn’t keep anything from you).

This essay exists to show the work—the messy, necessary steps that happen before the final answer ever appears. I sat down to write this essay, but ended up starting with how I built a system to support my writing and officially call myself a writer. Once I finished that essay, I was able to write this one.

Long story short (too late), my idea to write about my top restaurants resulted in five essays—two origin stories, the original story, and two resulting stories. That’s a whole lot of writing!

The floodgates are open. I can’t close the door now. But I wouldn’t want to either.