Tag: writers block

Blank

Posted on by philipdodson

Philip Dodson Blog

A blank screen – arghhhhh!!!

Getting stuck for something to write is silly, we never get stuck for something to say. Well I don’t anyway, I never get talking block.

When I first looked at this blank screen on WordPress today, for a moment I pondered what to write and nothing came up, writers block I told myself (excuses). Then I wrote a few paragraphs, and thought, that was pretty shit.

I deleted it.

Now I am writing this instead. Is this any better? Probably not. If only I hadn’t deleted the other post, you could be spared this.

The fact is, it is still better to write something everyday and share it, than to share nothing at all. As the more you do something, the better you get at it.

There is a good deal of pressure to make perfect, but perfect is another one of these things we are brainwashed to try and achieve, that we will never achieve, and anyway perfect is boring.

I’ll be back tomorrow, the next day and so on, because creating something is far better than never trying.

Writing, that seems so easy

Posted on by philipdodson

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.

750 Words

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.