Writing Like Bicycling

How tools are to be used when needed – only

You have to keep the momentum going! If you skip one beat, you’ll kill the music!

Writers are often hooked up on an idea that they must keep writing. Like shoemakers must make shoes, and the captain must keep steering the ship. There is a pace to keep up with, a steady stream of needs to fulfill.

On social media, writers coach each other with some guidelines that most often start with consistency. Find a pace and stick to it.

If you have ever tried bicycling, you’ll know why consistency is needed. You can’t just stop stepping on the pedals, because then the bicycle will stop its move forward, and before long, it will fall over. End of the ride. Writing is supposed to work the same, so you must carefully provide an article each week, or each day, or whatever schedule you have started out with.

The construction of the bicycle is very simple, so it needs this kind of simple use. The bicycle needs it. Think about that for a moment. You need to keep up the pace, the momentum, the consistency, for the sake of a tool that was actually meant to help you. Now you have to help it instead.

Writing is an art, or maybe it’s a craft. But strictly speaking, under such big words lie the simple fact that it’s a tool. You can do something with writing, just like you can do something with a hammer or – a bicycle.

The tool is rarely the goal in itself. “I am a writer”, you might say, and therefore you write. You are a tool-user. A hammerer. A cyclist.

But you obviously started doing it for a purpose. What was that purpose again? You forgot? Now you just write? You just use the tool for no reason?

Tools can be fascinating. I have been studying kitchen knives and read posts and articles by people who are fascinated by them, and who can talk long and passionately about steel types and the shape and thickness of the blade, about handle materials and the beauty of a design. Of course, kitchen knives can cut food into smaller pieces, which should be their original purpose, but the fascination of their design, perhaps spiced up with storytelling such as "this type of knife is a traditional Japanese knife that only the most experienced chefs, the main chefs, in the finest kitchens are allowed to use, and now I have one too!" Sort of makes me the main chef in my kitchen, if I have that knife, doesn’t it?

There are knife collectors. They want all kinds of knives from all manufacturers. A knife can be looked at, hanging on a knife magnet on the kitchen wall, or perhaps carefully placed in a knife drawer, with slots cut out to allow for the knife to sit steadily without touching the other knives.

Fascinating!

I don’t know if anybody collects hammers, but it could easily be. And bicycles. And writings.

We can get so amazed by tools that we value and worship them for just being the tools, without any purpose. The knife collection is strictly speaking a bit silly, unless you run a knife museum that is meant to help people understand the historical development of knives and how they're made.

A library, the collection of writings, is similarly useful for a purpose. Libraries with printed books, nicely bound and arranged on shelves, alphabetically or after topic. Some people like to arrange them by size or by color.

But the tool, writing, was meant to be used with a purpose. Most often, that purpose would be something else than “consistency” or “momentum”. The purpose was to share information or provide a reading experience. To bring the joy of reading something practical or pleasant.

Writing is even more amazing than most tools, in that it is a tool used to create other tools. The written by itself becomes a tool for conveying information or beauty. The written is an expression, but pointless if not being read, thereby acting as the tool of passing on that information, that beauty.

A musician can play consistently by just making sounds with an instrument for five minutes every hour, which would probably get quite annoying after a while. We expect the musician to play something, not just sounds. A melody. Perhaps singing along. Something constructed, with a shape and a meaning.

A bicyclist is expected to use the bicycle to go somewhere. Or perhaps to exercise, so, just going in a circle. But a purpose there must be.

Writing without such a similar purpose, just for consistency and for keeping the momentum going, is like that pointless sounds by the musician every hour, or the bicyclist just riding without knowing why, without going anywhere or gaining anything. Continuing doing it will create an equivalent to the collection of kitchen knives, all amazing tools, but not needed.

Real writers are not consistent. They are purposeful.

This article was first published at From a writer’s perspective, a newsletter hosted on LinkedIn.