For quite some time now, I’ve been telling myself that I want to write more. There’s plenty of research that shows that writing is a great way to get to know yourself better and, in many situations, to feel better. A lot of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is based on getting your thoughts out of your head and out into the real world where you can see how distorted they are.
And I have been writing more! Since December 12th, I’ve been doing the ‘morning pages’ exercise from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and I’ve been finding it to be really helpful for my overall mood and willingness to try new things.
But that’s really only basically stream of consciousness writing, not anything more structured. And it’s just thoughts, not creativity, really (I mean, it COULD be – you can write anything you want in the morning pages, but for me it’s a cross between a ‘brain drain’ (Cameron actually refers to it that way and it’s a good metaphor) and a bit of a journal (which I ALSO want to do more of). It’s not really the type of writing I think I want to try.
So day after day I say to myself “I should sit down and write something.” (THAT sentence shows up in the morning pages pretty regularly). I borrowed “The Writer’s Lab” from the library & it’s due back tomorrow, unused. So I decided to get curious about what was really holding me back.
My first thought was “well, I don’t really have a place to write” Sure, nobody ever does any writing in coffee shops or in bed or at the desk or at one of the THREE computers they own (in fairness, two of them are over five years old).
That was followed by “but I don’t know what tools I should use!” Ah yes… The self-perpetuating variant of yak-shaving that is tool-smithing. Perhaps the greatest method of procrastination ever invented by humans (and one particularly beloved by software developers because we can make new tools to avoid doing what the tool is supposed to make easier).
But there’s a little bit of truth in that last one. I am very much enjoying writing with pen & paper for the morning pages and have developed a bit of a fetish for nice stationary and writing tools. But there are pragmatic reasons to write on a computer, not least of which is the complete illegibility of my handwriting (not good to start with and completely devastated by a career in software). It’s also pretty much a given that any publication of what I write will be done via computer. Transcribing my own writing doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to me, although there are benefits to that type of process. It forces a write/edit/revise cycle that can too easily be short-circuited by ‘live’ writing. But I think it makes sense for me to start out on the computer and go from there.
“Medium” or “WordPress”†? “WriteRoom” or “Sublime”? “Scrivener”? OK, now you’re just fucking around. Pick one and get on with it. Delay any decision you can (a good rule in general, as long as you’re taking into all the factors that make up whether ‘you can’) and start.
So I am. I am making one concession to my poor mind that is afraid of failing/rejection/mockery. I’m going to do all the fiction-type writing on the MacBook Air, using WriteRoom, with wifi turned off. That machine will become THE place to write creatively and that will also lend a bit of ceremony to the act of sitting down to write. Not so much that it’s ‘precious’ but enough to give it a bit of a sense of occasion and to celebrate that I’m trying something new.
† While I was trying to figure out what it was that was stopping me from getting started, I realized something surprising. I was worried about writing on WordPress at this site because I was afraid no one would find and read what I wrote. But I was also worried about writing on Medium because I was afraid that people WOULD find and read what I wrote. Recognizing that last part was the thing that got me moving.
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