Writing, that seems so easy

I have always been able to write well and when I first thought about actually publishing stuff, I thought this will be easy, it’s only writing.

I started to blog for my own site, the @Work Hub site and various other sites as guest blogger. I found it much more difficult than I had realised, especially when people asked me to write something on a pre-defined topic and by a certain deadline.

As soon as there was a pressure, then the writing became hard and I would often put it off and leave to the last minute.

The other thing that I found myself doing was correcting typos/spelling as I went along. This I found would interrupt my flow and that would make it doubly difficult to get the thoughts out.

So frustrated by this, as I really wanted to write and after all I can’t be that hard!! I talked to few others that write regularly. Then one day chatting to my mate Bernie, who’s a regular and great writer, he talked about 750 words, a site where you write 750 words daily and privately. Initially, I thought shit, I struggle to do a few blog posts, 750 words a day.

Anyway, I signed up to 750Words.com in September 2014 and so far I have written 112,248 words over 138 days, so I have missed about 30 days. If someone had said to me before September to find time and inspiration to write that many words in 5 months, I would have simply laughed. My best streak was 60 days in a row.

I now find writing easy again and my best pieces, that I publish, come from 750 words. This is because there is no pressure, it’s after all a private post. So I sit and just write, I don’t worry about the spelling or typos and I lust ‘spit’ it all out on the keyboard and go with the flow.

Then if at the end I like it and think it is good enough to share, then I copy and paste it into WordPress, tidy it up, fix the spelling and add a pic. Hit the publish button and boom, job done.

So I now find writing easy.

The lessons learnt – avoid putting pressure on yourself and don’t interrupt the flow or concentration. Also realise, that not everything you write will be good, so don’t put unrealistic expectations on yourself.