Yes, lame, unoriginal start. Not the first start. 18th this decade I believe.
I have started and stopped writing more times than I can count (exaggeration. I can count up to as high as 300. Even higher on a good day!)
All these interruptions are because I have plenty of chaotic thoughts and I do not think I am structuring them well enough to justify my first blog post.
“I’ll start once I have a good structure”, I always think…
All of that changed after a recent episode of Harmontown (Dan Harmon’s podcast, currently influencing my life immensely).
Harmon is a television writer, and he was asked to advise new writers on how he handles the “writer’s block”
“Dan, do you ever get writers’ block? What do you do if that happens?”
“I’ve said this a thousand times before but… it’s good advice. Prove that you’re a bad writer. There you go.. ok. You’re trying to prove that you’re a good writer, that’s what’s blocking you because no matter how good you get, you’re always gonna think that you should be better than you are because.. you wanna be a good writer.. and you will be.. by thinking that but that’s not gonna get you writing right now. The only thing that’s going to make you get better is practising and the only thing you’re going to be able to write right now is something worse than what you think you should be writing…
So you have to STOP thinking about the thing that you’re eventually going to be able to do and you have to START thinking about the thing that you’re terrified that you will do cos that will go by very quickly. It’s like cheating… it’s like putting shit in your gas tank… it’s like… it’s like putting the exhaust in your gas tank… it’s like the thing that your car makes, that you can’t use, you can fuel your car on it.. technically. Just write badly.. specifically do that by saying.. ok I’m gonna actually go there. I’m gonna show myself what a piece of shit writer I really am without thinking about any of it.”
So, I guess that settles it. I am out here to prove what a bad writer I am.
As Vijay(about whom you’ll be hearing a lot if I do continue blogging this time) would put it, you don’t need the motivation to make it a habit. You need to get mechanical about it. It’s an item on your checklist, you have to do it.
Let’s start big in that case. Every day, I make a post. Could be small, big, personal, a new idea, a life philosophy, something that inspired me. Just one thing every evening. As a must-do before I sleep.
And once I do get good at this, which I will, I shall be sharing this more publicly. Here’s hoping 🤞
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