#26: Why I write
And some of the other writing I like.
I’m Luke Craven; this is another of my weekly explorations of how systems thinking and complexity can be used to drive real, transformative change in the public sector and beyond. The first issue explains what the newsletter is about; you can see all the issues here.
Hello, dear reader,
Well, this is my twenty-sixth issue and we are half way through a calendar year! 🥳🎉
I get asked a lot why I write this newsletter and how I maintain the weekly pace. The simple answer to both questions is that I’ve always found the page a useful space to think; to contain, craft and curate my thoughts. My head tends to be quite a noisy place. I’ve never been very good at switching off or tuning out. My Twitter feed is always open. My email inbox is always full of others’ ideas. Writing helps me focus that noise toward an outcome; to pull together loosely connected thoughts in to some thread of coherence that has to make sense to someone other than me.
When I moved out of academia, the opportunity I had to do regular, unstructured writing dried up almost overnight. At the time I thought nothing of it. I was tired and I was excited about doing something new. But over time that writing muscle began to atrophy without me really noticing. When, in August last year, I was invited to deliver a lecture for an executive education program at the Crawford School at ANU, I struggled to get my thoughts down on the page but I couldn’t believe how much I took pleasure in the process of doing so. I resolved in myself that whatever my day-job, I need a space to think and write about the things that matter to me.
Substack is not a perfect medium, by any measure, but I’ve found that it works for me. The ritual and cadence of a weekly issue holds me accountable to myself. It shifts the focus of this space away from the “showpiece” (as Joel Hooks put it) and toward on the process, care, and craft it takes to get there. For me, this newsletter is a process-oriented creative space, in which I can invite my readers in to join me in the emergence of my thinking. It satisfies my need to get things out of my head, and allows my writing to follow those thoughts, without trying to make it prematurely fit into some shape or form.
Does that mean some of the early issues are probably out of date? Probably. Are there parts of them with which I no longer agree? Almost certainly. Will I go back and change them? Probably not. Do I plan pull the parts together into some kind of whole? I hope I get that opportunity. This is, after all, as much for you as it is for me.
The reading I always prioritise
Amidst the constant stream of articles, books, tweets, emails, half-finished PowerPoint slides, sometimes I feel like both my vocational and personal lives are built on the practice of reading. As I’ve written before, the irony of that reflection is that I consider myself to be a terrible reader. I seldom read something cover-to-cover. I never finish something in one sitting. My bookcase is a collection of bookmarks as much as it is one of books. It’s perhaps no surprise that amidst that chaos, the things that I always find space to read are the curated ideas that land directly in my inbox. These are the four I couldn’t do without.
Future Crunch, a weekly newsletter curated by a group of scientists, artists, researchers and designers who believe that science and technology are the most powerful drivers of human progress. Each issue contains good news stories from around the world, in an effort to counteract the non-stop, 24 hour bombardment of death and destruction from traditional and social media.
Brain Pickings a free Sunday digest of the week’s most interesting and inspiring articles across art, science, philosophy, creativity, children’s books, and other strands of Maria Popova’s search for truth, beauty, and meaning. Brain Pickings speaks unpretentiously to the rational mind and to the human spirit. It’s staggering to me that Maria has been writing it for over fifteen years.
The Ed's Up by science writer Ed Yong is a wonderful digest of Ed’s writing and links to some of the great stuff that he has read. I also recommend Ed’s book I Contain Multitudes, which looks at the amazing partnerships between animals and microbes.
99% Invisible, the newsletter. 99% Invisible is a most popularly known as narrative podcast hosted by Roman Mars about all the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about—the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world. There’s also a newsletter. You should subscribe to them both.
A final thought…
I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big successes. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of human pride.
By the way: This newsletter is hard to categorise and probably not for everyone—but if you know unconventional thinkers who might enjoy it, please share it with them.
Find me elsewhere on the web at www.lukecraven.com, on Twitter @LukeCraven, on LinkedIn here, or by email at <luke.k.craven@gmail.com>.