Why I struggled with writing?

I try to write two newsletters:

• Life Experiment
• Minimalistic software

I started systematically writing in April 2019. I was able to maintain a steady pace for around a year. Then in mid-March 2020, my writing started to "slip". I had to force myself to write the newsletters, which was stupid because I was supposed to enjoy the writing.

I had hit a bit of a snag. I had ideas about what to write, drafts that needed just a bit more of polishing. But I didn't pump those pieces out.

The issue for me was how to write finished stories that fit into a large picture. My writing was just whatever idea popped up in my mind at that moment.

So I took a few months break. Downscaled the publishing and finally circulated back to the question that many people from my audience asked me.

What am I trying to communicate? Whom do I write for?

I said. I write what I would like to read. Sure that's a noble motivation, but it's not enough.

What's the story? Why is this particular story relevant to the reader?

For Minimalistic software:

• Story: Simple software.
• Why?: Share my lessons on how to write simple software, deepen my coding expertise and make some 💰💰.

For Life Experiment:

• Story: My journey through life and lessons learned.
• Why? 🤷‍♂️

So yeah for Minimalistic software blog I have a pretty clear road map for writing in my head. But why is my writing road map so clear for Minimalistic software and so blurry for Life Experiment?

Well for starters, coding and software is way more structured field than personal growth. In science, software world, or any technical writing, the structure is pretty much set in stone.

The concepts are there, and now you just need to sprinkle a bit of nice packaging around, and that's almost it.

But in personal growth domain, the situation is a little different. We need the core personal story first, lessons and then the wrap-up. Plus it doesn't help that life is the biggest mess of them all.

My writing voice for Life Experiment is based on my personal experience. Personal observations. Compared to Minimalistic software, it requires way, way more creative work and energy to finish a post for Life Experiment, especially if I want the post to be authentic.

I'm trying to write novel pieces, despite this being the more challenging path, because it feels right.

It's not that I don't know how to do enough creative work, but that I don't see a clear path from ideas to finished, coherent pieces within a single storyline.

Can I change that? I'm trying 🙂 Hopefully, I find a coherent storyline for Life Experiment in the future.

Habit of writing

As in any habit formation momentum is everything. In November 2019, I did the challenge of writing each weekday which resulted in 20 pieces. The process gave me tremendous momentum.

But in 2020, I had to force my self to write the newsletter. That was because I tried to write only once a week. Every Monday and that was it.

Reality is that selective writing habit can get you only so far. Once the motivation fades. Bye, bye.

If you write two hours a day suddenly you get from:

no topics to write about,to too many topics to write about.

As a result of regular writing in the last year, I learned:

• How to write finished, coherent pieces quickly.
• How to generate enough authentic content material weekly.

We'll see if I really learned my lessons in 2021 🙂

Stages of writing

Depending on how much you write, you know that staring at a blank piece of paper is pretty daunting. Sure you come up with something, but in the long run, that's not the best writing strategy.

Nowadays, I split all of my writing into three stages to avoid staring into a blank page.

There are three main stages:

• 1.) Get the topic idea and write the bullet points into my journal. Type the bullet points to the PC.
• 2.) Think how the draft can be improved (view draft on the tablet). Write notes into the journal and then type up the improvements.
• 3.) Polish the draft on the PC to the death.

The first two stages (1.) & 2.)) mostly happen inside my head and in the physical journal. While step 3.) has to occur on the PC. Once the piece's structure is clear, it's simply faster to edit the piece on the computer.

So:

• Stage 1 is easy.Just make sure you capture your brain farts.
• Stage 3 is easy. Just rewrite one sentence at the time. This stage is cosmetics. Iterate until the text flows.
• Stage 2 is tricky. My approach? Let the piece marinate for a bit. Leave it for a few days and then get back.

A blank white piece of paper, a pan, time, and thoughts are everything you need to develop initial drafts. Then pull out your PC and edit the draft to infinity:

I generate the writing ideas mostly in the morning during my morning reading and breakfast. Oh and creativity spikes once I drink my first cup of black tea. Who would have thought of that 🙂

Why I hope this time it will work?

During 2020 I created quite a backlog of ideas.

I severely "upgraded" my content creation habits. I write every day, draw every day, quite often store cool images. In other words, content creation has become my daily habit. While in 2020 it was more off an accidental action every now and then.

I'll try to downsize my expectations for perfect pieces. I'm still a novice that needs to write several tens of thousands of words before becoming a decent writer.