Writer's Block
Passion Without Direction
Cashing A Blank Check
Trying to write when you have nothing to say is like trying to cash a blank check. The value and potential is there and it does exist, but it’s strangled and killed off by lack of information and ideas. For a writer who enjoys translating emotion and thought to digital paper nothing is more feared and frustrating than not having a purpose for your writing. You know that writing when you have nothing to say leads to meandering aimlessly and endlessly, like you’re in a vast mental desert with no traces of brain juices to keep that page flowing like a river of insight and growth. It leads to readers feeling bored like they’re wasting their time and you never know if or when they will ever be back. Sometimes you begin to wonder if even at your best, what you had to offer was good enough for anyone to read or if you were just fooling yourself all along.
You Can’t Shit If You Never Eat
Writing like any form of creativity requires being able to observe and experience enough of life to produce something. From nothing comes nothing, so the metaphor I like to use is “You Can’t Shit If You Never Eat”-meaning that if no new information or life experiences occur for you to process, interpret or react to then you have nothing to write, sing, post or make a youtube video about. There are times in all of our lives when everything is either peaceful or just quiet and uneventful. It can be hard to know what to do with yourself if all you have to look forward to at the moment is whatever you feel like. Sometimes that can last several days or weeks, maybe months for some people. My fingers itch to put something-anything out there even if it’s nonesense. Personally I’d much rather be working on six drafts of articles that each have great potential and are incomplete but no topic behind them, than being stuck in the position I presently find myself in. Sometimes I will have an article I’m working on that I know will take a long time to write because I have alot to say about the topic. This scenario is preferred over any kind of creative drought.
Drafts Are A Writer’s Best Friend
Whether I’m going through writer’s block or have too many things on my mind at once, having the ability to save drafts is a godsend like no other! If I have nothing to say I start a draft about the first thing that comes to mind and if anything new comes up for me I revisit it later and add on. I repeat this process until I can form a complete idea that I think is worthy of having an article all its own. On the other side of this issue if I am having a surplus of new ideas surging, I’ll make say six different drafts and focus on continuing to write on the topic I’m most excited about in the moment and then switch back and forth depending on my mood. Another thing I have considered is going back through my archives of older pieces and seeing if there’s anything in my past that I no longer agree with and create a counter post to debunk what I said before and then explain how I’ve grown since then and why I now see things differently. Each of these ideas are great, but for now none of them seem like they will work for me. I’m now taking time to read stories on Medium and hoping that someone will eventually spark an idea to write about something else. One way or the other, I’m always thinking about writing and always wanting to say more.
Going Back To School
On the 20th of this month I will be returning to school to get some more college classes out of the way. I am working towards earning an Associate’s and then a Master’s degree in psychology so I can become a therapist. This has been a dream of mine for many years and I’m finally following throughwith it at the age of thirty-two. I’ll be taking a Sociology 101 course, an English 101 course that I flunked out of last year, a Music Appreciation course and a psychology course about adolescent development. Being flooded with new and interesting topics as a full time student should give me plenty of ideas to play around with and eventually write about as I continue my education. I very likely won’t have much time to blog for awhile since I will most likely be working very hard to stay on top of assignments and making sure that I pass my classes.
What Does This Mean For Me Right Now?
While my goal is generally to put out the very best that I have to offer as far as writing goes, I still expect to put out a few more duds here and there leading up to the start of school. This is what I love to do and even at my worst I still want to find reasons to keep going. The overall quality of what I put out will get better over time but in the short term it will probably be questionable. My very first post on Substack was actually a story I wrote for my Psychology 101 course late last year called “Swallowing Spirits & Spitting Out Demons” (also here on Beehiiv) and to this day, it is still one of my best performing pieces in my whole catalogue! So after they are graded, some of my assignments may show up here just like my very first post did. For those who choose to continue following my writing journey I thank You! Hopefully one day I can reach a levle of skill and recognition where I’m regularly earning money from doing my passion but for now I’m just going through the typical ups and downs of gaining and losing subscribers, getting little to no interaction and occasionally wondering if I’m wasting my time doing this. In the end it won’t matter, because I will still be here tomorrow whether I am disappointed again or I somehow blow up.