Writing, Philosophy
Lowering the barriers to writing, and possibly lowering the bar as well.
At different times of my life I have blogged and posted work. I was at one point writing a chapter a week of an upcoming book and publishing it. I stopped. In fact I stopped working on my book altogether. I could say it was because I got busy. I did, but I don’t really think that’s why. I think it was writer’s block.
The book was a sequel to another one I had published, Talons and Teeth. I was writing and publishing these chapters and then I got stuck. I started having anxiety about the story, the direction it was going. It felt off. It wasn’t coming out as good as my first book. I set the bar high, which I want to do for a publishable book, but I got discouraged and the words stopped flowing.
I think that’s what writer’s block is at its core, getting hung up on something being ‘good enough’ and getting trapped in editing and researching and thinking land without ever getting words onto a page. These blog posts are all kind of nonsense thoughts. My thoughts and ideas don’t have to go anywhere. I’m not being paid. These posts don’t even have to be good or interesting to anyone except me. I may be the only one who reads them, and I’m honestly okay with that. They’re for me and they’re allowed to be bad, so they’re actually really fun and easy to write. And I don’t spend hours editing them either, which is my least favorite part of writing.
I’ve finished that sequel, by the way. Well, all except two chapters. Now it’s stuck in editing land and may be there for a while. We’ll see.