writer’s block

As I want to start a blogging section for my personal page, I chose a topic, wrote maybe like a sentence or two, and sat there for like ages without being able to think of what to write next. Slowly realising how terrible I am at writing and just being able to articulate my thoughts clearly in general. I brought this issue up with my favourite therapist Grok.

The first suggestion it gave was to just spurt whatever is on my mind without judgement, which is exactly what I am doing now. I am just spurting out my thoughts as it is being processed, this very sentence that you are reading. And now magically, I feel like I can yap endlessly about how I can just spurt out thoughts so spontaneously, thanks to Grok’s suggestion. Free typing is cool and all, but not feeling judgemental, versus typing without thinking are very different things. Note to self is to not confuse the two, developing a bad habit of “not thinking before you type”.

I am not sure what a blog should entail, but I don’t want to think too much about this and let uncertainty constantly holding me back from taking action. I firmly believe developing a habit of writing will help improve ones articulation, as it promotes promotes producing thoughtful responses onto paper/screen. In taking the first step, I have already won half the battle, the other half is consistency. Publicising my writing will certainly hold me accountable for the long run, even if it is just 1 piece of work a week. I have so much topics I want to dive into and bringing order to the chaos of ideas in my mind.

Some other suggestions Grok gave me for writing blogs were

• start small and specific - similar to how productivity gurus give you advice to design goals and tasks such that they are small and atomic, so there is low resistance to you getting started with them

• embrace imperfection - your first blog doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, they can be about absolutely anything, just start somewhere

• follow a concrete structure - if you really don’t know what to write about, you can follow a hard coded structure/template instead for ease

• read more, copy less - this is also a key concept behind learning, if you just copy the content your brain is not active learning. But if you let your brain process these ideas, you comprehend and learn them, your brain forms these neural connections and ideas stick, which is much more efficient than simply trying to copy/memorise

Just a brief afterthought. As I went to back to reread everything, I realised how much I was using filler words like like like like. But then as I continued to yap and I have not used them at all. This just goes to show how even your thought processes, something that is not physically tangible, can be warmed up, allowing one to articulate more fluently.