There’s Just So Much to Write…

I have a long list of blogs, and one section is my focus list–it's now forty-something titles long from its original five. How on earth has this grown so much in so short a time?!

Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather this than the opposite of no ideas. But was this down to a lack of organisation, or was I not qualifying my ideas well enough?

Will I ever get through these titles?
How much can I reasonably expect to get through?

I’ve been struggling to get anything to the point of publishing for a while. I’ve done the quick and easy blog/posts that follow the clinical listicle format–so not much writing effort is involved there, and it definitely feels like a cop-out.

But I am at the beginning stage of this site, and I feel I really ought to write a few more articles from each area before I start spreading the word more confidently. But that's the trap, isn't it? The perfectionist mindset is creeping its way back in.

The ideas don't stop, but the writing certainly does. Just this morning, I thought of a new blog post that felt very relevant to what’s going on right now in my life. But I’ve been following the process of putting an idea on the list to come back to when I have the energy to complete it.

The ideas don't stop, but the writing certainly does.

But the thing is, nothing ends up being relevant to the here and now (yet I want it to be for this site). Austin Kleon in Show Your Work speaks of the distance between the idea, creating it, and releasing it. Closing that 'gap' is one of the most important things you can do as an artist, and this is probably my only goal as an artist.

I also don’t want to force myself to write just anything for the sake of it; that’s not the reason I started this project in the first place.

So it must be a balance: ignore the perfectionist in your head, but be able to recognise the difference between pushing through something that's just hard, and when forcing it to happen becomes harmful to the process/outcome.

I’m beginning to think I might redefine my ‘life in progress’ tag as a place for me to do a very quick turnaround life update with no clear point, much like this post.

There isn’t much point to this, other than to share. I guess it's also a subtle kickback to the way content is written and made, designed to be helpful to you in some way.

And maybe this one should have just stayed in the journal.

Speak soon,
Will

P.S. I apologise if this didn't make much sense in places or seemed to make a jump, I was figuring out the feelings as I was writing.