Full Steam Ahead

Almost a week ago I did something I rarely do: I wrote an article out of frustration. I had pushed and pushed myself to not only write every day, but to publish something at least once a day as well. But some days, there just isn’t anything to write about; sometimes, I need more than a day to work through an idea; and some days, I just don’t feel like writing. Instead of a strong readership, I only had frustration to show for my efforts. Writer’s Guilt was me saying that I had had enough: I was finished prolonging this never-ending sprint, constantly pushing myself to make and publish work I was not proud of. Then I decided to shift gears, looking to a shift in focus to revitalize my writing. Almost a week later, I’m here to say it worked.

Shortly after publishing Shifting Gears, I started writing again. After I wrote and published Writer’s Guilt, as I sat back in my chair and started to calm down, I realized it wasn’t the writer’s craft I hated after all, just the pressure to write. Without it even for such a short period of time, I began to feel the familiar itch to create something new; I wanted to write again, and so I did.

For the next few hours, I wrote constantly: I made drafts, brainstormed possible topics almost as fast as I could toss them out, and began piecing together a new article I had wanted to write for quite some time. I spent a few hours that day and then every available moment until last night writing that article, and then I posted it earlier this evening, six days after its inception. Curiously titled Nickelodeon’s Experiment, this is the first longform piece I have written in quite some time. In a way, I view it as my return to writing — to real writing, not the piddly linkblog “writing” all too common these days, but to real prose built word by word and honed to a document I feel happy to call my own.