{"id":2874,"date":"2026-10-12T08:00:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T15:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/?p=2874"},"modified":"2026-10-12T08:18:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T15:18:47","slug":"mayhew-moves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/2026\/10\/12\/mayhew-moves\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayhew Moves"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

No Contest favourite Jonathan Mayhew<\/a> has moved over to Substack<\/a>. (You can still find all of this writing dynamo’s first 24 years of blogging on his Stupid Motivational Tricks platform,<\/a> but it has been discontinued otherwise.) Mayhew has been a true blogger, keeping lively and brilliant what has become an old-fashioned format: very frequent posting at all levels of discourse and across multiple disciplines and obsessions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From this weekend<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I\u2019ve blogged since 2002. The archives of my blogs is an entire intellectual history of myself, complete with abandoned projects and tangential avenues that led to unexpected places, even if I\u2019ve forgotten about most of them now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is great practice for writing prose with a regular, daily rhythm. I developed a blogging style: to the point, well-written at times, always vigorous and usually peppered with a dash of humor. Yes, I am a big believer in revision, when I am writing a scholarly article. For a blog post, revision will minimal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can get better at writing simply by writing, as well as by the time-worn method of writing a \u201cshitty first draft\u201d and then revising the bejeezus out it. That way works too, but I prefer to improve by starting over again and writing something better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s funny when people claim that writing never gets easier. Why would one human skill, out of all skills that can be developed, be exempt from the general rule: that practicing something in a systematic way makes it easier to do? A chef who has made thousands of omelets is not going to say that making an omelet never gets easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why is writing difficult? The process of learning to write is hard, but writing once one has some proficiency is not. So, I think that the problem is emotional: writing is difficult because of anxiety or trepidation. Will people like what I am doing? Will I find a publisher? Am I a good writer? Will I get tenure? All the voices in the head yelling at you, when you start to write each day, generate doubts. Free from those doubts, you can simply see writing as a practice as enjoyable as improvising at the piano or cooking a new recipe.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No Contest favourite Jonathan Mayhew has moved over to Substack. (You can still find all of this writing dynamo’s first 24 years of blogging on his Stupid Motivational Tricks platform, but it has been discontinued otherwise.) Mayhew has been a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[143,62],"class_list":["post-2874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roberts-posts","tag-blogging","tag-mayhew"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2874"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2877,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2874\/revisions\/2877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}