Jul 16, 2026
I was at a conference in Switzerland. A reader came up to me and asked, "Vitaliy, I've been reading your articles for years. I'd like to write. How should I start?" This question spilled into a long conversation over dinner. When I told him what almost two decades of writing have taught me, his face fell. He'd tried it. He'd spent weeks staring at the computer and written complete garbage.
Welcome to my world.
In this piece, I work through what I told him over that dinner. Frustration and empty pages are par for the course. Quantity and quality are joined at the hip. "Writing is rewriting" is not an empty platitude, and by the 47th rewrite the pile of coal dumped onto white pages from your subconscious slowly turns into orderly diamonds. I talk about finding your voice, why I visualized my friends when I started writing for TheStreet.com (they were the first victims), and what happened when my reader brightened halfway through dinner and said, "Maybe I should hire a ghostwriter."
That last question is where the conversation turned. I walk through why the answer depends entirely on your "why," what Anaïs Nin has to do with it, and the honest reason I don't paint even though I'd like to have painted. My brother Alex paints. My father paints. I tried. J. Cole gets quoted. There is a difference between wanting to write and wanting to have written, and figuring out which one you are is the whole game.
The full piece is at investor.fm.
_________________________________________________________
🔗 LINKS MENTIONED:
Fiddler on the Roof and Value Investing
https://investor.fm/fiddler-on-the-roof-and-value-investing/
_________________________________________________________
📩 Join 100,000+ readers on Vitaliy's FREE weekly
newsletter: https://investor.fm/sign-up/
📚
Vitaliy's books:
Soul in the Game - https://amzn.to/43CF73v
The Little Book of Sideways Markets - https://amzn.to/3QWTlqZ
Active
Value Investing - https://amzn.to/3u8zn3A
🌐
Follow Vitaliy:
X/Twitter
- https://x.com/vitaliyk
LinkedIn -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/katsenelson/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/vitaliyk/
Website - https://investor.fm/
_________________________________________________________
WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management
Associates (IMA) and an award-winning writer. Forbes Magazine
called him "The New Benjamin Graham." His work has appeared in the
Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Fortune,
Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy. He is the author of
three books, including Soul in the Game: The Art of a Meaningful
Life. _________________________________________________________
Please read the following important
disclosure: https://investor.fm/disclosure/
View IMA's regulatory filings — including ADV Part 2A & 2B, Form CRS, firm brochure, conflicts of interest disclosures, sample quarterly letters, and privacy policy — at imausa.com.