I wanted to be upfront, so here it goes.
Writing for you has gotten hard.
Even though I’ve had so many thoughts I’ve wanted to write about and share with you, I’ve been avoiding my computer like the plague.
I might have said before that I’ve gotten busier, or that I’m embracing taking my time with writing.
But the truth is, when I do manage to open my computer and pull up a blank word doc, I find myself looking for any way out — the cats need to be fed. The laundry needs to be moved to the dryer. Oh, there’s 15 urgent messages to respond to!
so what changed, you say?
When I write just for me, it’s easy — I open my notebook, put my pen to the paper, and let the words flow. It feels like breathing, meditating. Writing gives me the space to make sense of my thoughts and feelings.
And then I share them with you — over coffee, a walk, or a phone call. We laugh, discuss, and swap stories. We let the conversation flow, and that conversation brings us closer together.
One year ago, I decided I wanted to share more of my everyday thoughts with you — to encourage more conversation about ever more vulnerable things. So I decided to share my writing.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s been lovely. I’ve rekindled friendships, had wonderful conversations, and received a lot of positive affirmation along the way.
And yet — now more than ever — when I think about translating my thoughts into something for others, I feel my insides start to churn.
Because now all I can think is:
Is this interesting enough?
Artistic enough?
Insightful enough?
Succinct enough?
How do I make the title catchy?
How do I make it something worth reading?
And it’s getting hard to hear my inner voice.
it’s not you, it’s me.
And when I say that, I mean it.
I decided to look at my whole writing process to figure out what is going wrong. And when I did, I’m not surprised that it’s gotten so hard.
Behind each piece, the process looks something like this:
Free-write.
Consolidate thoughts into bullets.
Rewrite thoughts under each bullet.
Edit sentence structure and succinctness.
Come up with a title.
Create illustrations.
Change the title to something better.
Read through it once more aka make a shitton more edits.
Read through it one last time just in case.
Create social media posts about it.
Publish.
It’s an intensive process. Which isn’t necessarily a problem, except…. the only parts I truly enjoy are free-writing and illustrating — the parts where I get to express myself.
So why is that such a tiny part of this writing things I do for fun?
the truth is, I still don’t believe in my voice
I had put this process in place early on to help me become a better writer.
But now, this process is sending a message.
It’s telling me: your unedited voice is not good enough.
It’s saying: for your writing to be good, it has to be rearranged, rewritten, struggled through.
It’s saying: for your writing to be good, it has to be hard to create.
But I don’t want it to feel hard anymore.
Why do I think that for something to be worthwhile, it has to be hard?
Is it so wrong to want writing to feel easeful? Joyful?
Is it so wrong to believe that my raw free-write voice might already have value worth sharing?
i’ve got some work to do
I want writing for you to be a creative outlet that I can once again enjoy.
So you’re going to see some changes around here.
Changes in style. Length. Quality.
It’ll probably get worse before it gets better. But hopefully, my efforts help me build a healthier, more sustainable relationships with writing.
If the writing takes a direction that you no longer want to be a part of, no hard feelings! Truly.
And for those of you that do stick around, thank you.
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Note: I tried a different style this time to get my creative spark going. The “you” here is largely metaphorical. It represents a generic “audience” in my mind that I write to. It turned out to be really fun treating my relationship with writing like a relationship with an actual person — here’s to more explorative style ahead!
I really appreciate this reflection, and *feel* you. I felt inspired to update my own blog last week, fired something off, and then regretted that it wasn’t edited and it was too centered on me — and not others’ learning. I then had a moment of epiphany where I was like “I made up these rules!” While I was able to alleviate any guilt, I’d still say the whole thing was more exhausting than it needed to be. Sending you hugs.