I always hated writing essays for school and I've never been good at it. Writing essays for school sucks because you can't write what you really think and it teaches you to supress your thinking and parahprase the textbook.
If philosophy, the art of asking hard questions, is the love of wisdom, then school (and religion), the art of not asking hard questions, is the love of what?
At the begining I just started reading a lot of graet essays, mostly from pg, sama and esr. I got really into hacking culture and realized that many great hackers write and publish their own essays on the web. I've always been really into philosophy, especially Nietzsche, so I decided to give it a try. At the beginning, they were moronically stupid (don't publish your first 10-20 essays, trust me), but I really enjoy writing them. Over time, as I got better, I've noticed that the smartest things I say when talking to people are things I previously wrote in one of my essays. I don't think that people like elon or sama are coming up with all those smart things they say and do on the spot. I think it is just a byproduct of long hours of intense thinking, and since writing is the best tool to structure your thoughts, it looks like we all should maybe talk less and write more.