For the past few weeks I've been writing and posting a few articles on Medium. I had periods of time in which I posted daily, and periods in which I barely wrote anything. I wouldn't really want to go into too many details as to why I chose to try to write daily, or why I chose that platform, or why I am playing around with consistency.
What I want to talk about is how easy it is to get stuck when trying to write because instead of allowing yourself to experiment with every idea that you get, you wait until you find the right one. I understand why we do this - I really do - but I also understand that it's dumb and we should stop.
Yesterday I wrote an article called "Screw consistency and steady progress" where I expressed my frustration with my lack of progress and, more importantly, my obsession with following a certain "schedule" based around consistency. Instead of allowing myself to write and post as much as I could, I chose to impose on myself the idea of not posting more than one thing per platform a day.
That frustration also came from different sources, but mainly from my obsession with progress and, especially, the lack of it in my life in the past few months.
You might remember that in April I started a challenge, to write and post an article on Hive every single day until November. I managed to complete the challenge despite having a daily job, which helped me make great amounts of progress in regards to the number of articles I have on my profile.
But while posting once a day seemed like quite the goal for that period, considering that I was busy with my job for most of my day, doing the same thing now, when I am home and free, isn't that big of a deal. I could write multiple articles a day and post them without too much effort, since I don't do much else.
And while I really wish to do that, I find myself getting stuck, again and again, at the most important step: beginning. I want to write, I really do, but I don't want to sit here and spam everyone with meaningless posts about how my day went or what cool images I found on the internet or what games I play when I am bored.
I want to create meaningful content, at least whatever I am capable of at the moment. This means that I am always looking for ideas that are worth the time and effort that I'll spend writing about them. And yet, it's hard to find those ideas. It takes time to find something worthy of any effort, worthy of the eyes of those who might read what I write.
And so, I get stuck. I wait, and I wait, hoping to think of something good. And when I can't do it, I get distracted. I visit multiple websites, play some games, watch some videos. Then I get back to thinking, hoping that things will change. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
It's a dumb approach. Yes, I'll think of something good enough to write about. But while I'm waiting for that to happen, multiple other topics pop into my head at random times. Those are, sadly, unworthy of any effort, because as soon as they appear, I realize that they might not be that good in the first place. I disregard them, and I get back to waiting.
That single act makes me lose hours and hours of my time. What the hell have I been thinking about, disregarding ideas in such a way? How do I know that an idea is bad without even allowing it a moment to exist? How can I know that something is unworthy of any effort without giving it a chance? Hell, this entire post is the result of me actually giving a bad idea a try, hoping that through the process of what I call "writing" I will be able to transform it into something worthy of someone's time.
So here's an option that you have, as a writer, if you're stuck trying to find something good enough to write about: give all your ideas a try. Make an effort to develop a mediocre idea into something, anything. At times, you'll end up with something that isn't quite good. Other times however, you might end up with something worth posting. And even if that's not the case, your effort might lead you to a different, better topic that you can approach.