Blank Pages Scare Me
This is my entry for this month’s IndieWeb Carnival, hosted by Marisabel.
To be honest, pages scare me. I mean the empty ones that I have to fill. I want to fill. I would like to fill.
I have a strange relationship with writing: it is an action that both relaxes and terrifies me. It is hard, exhausting, and stressful. But it is also a relief and, sometimes, a joy like very few others.
Each time I sit down to write a piece, I end up pressing the Backspace key way more often than I would like. This is mostly true for short stories, but blog articles aren’t so different. I am often insecure about the words to put down. I delete and rewrite them so many times that sometimes I dreadfully stop and leave the page unfinished.
Those are the times when writing is stressful. Luckily, it’s not always like that. Recently, I wrote a few hundred (thousands?) words in a rush, spontaneously, at the most unexpected time: while waiting for my father’s surgical operation to finish. I was sitting outside the operating room complex, and a good piece of a story came out with almost zero effort.
By contrast, this morning, sitting at my desk, the page is putting up more resistance! The routine is often the same: my brain would like to take a weight off –that I often still have to identify–, but it also creates nonexistent obstacles in front of it. Even if nobody would read the words coming out, I would really like to write them without thinking too much, but I end up overthinking it — as with many other aspects of my life.
Luckily, my mind doesn’t always act like a scumbag brain1. Sometimes, though rarely, to be honest, it is easy to put down a stream of thoughts. Maybe my approach is wrong. As with everything, writing takes practice.
As an exercise, after this short(?) reflection, maybe2 I will try to think less and write without stopping too much. Just do it, goddamnit.
🎧 Today I rediscovered Cloudkicker
📖 Still on Frankenstein
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This is my entry for this month’s IndieWeb Carnival, hosted by Marisabel.
To be honest, pages scare me. I mean the empty ones that I have to fill. I want to fill. I would like to fill.
I have a strange relationship with writing: it is an action that both relaxes and terrifies me. It is hard, exhausting, and stressful. But it is also a relief and, sometimes, a joy like very few others.
Each time I sit down to write a piece, I end up pressing the Backspace key way more often than I would like. This is mostly true for short stories, but blog articles aren’t so different. I am often insecure about the words to put down. I delete and rewrite them so many times that sometimes I dreadfully stop and leave the page unfinished.
Those are the times when writing is stressful. Luckily, it’s not always like that. Recently, I wrote a few hundred (thousands?) words in a rush, spontaneously, at the most unexpected time: while waiting for my father’s surgical operation to finish. I was sitting outside the operating room complex, and a good piece of a story came out with almost zero effort.
By contrast, this morning, sitting at my desk, the page is putting up more resistance! The routine is often the same: my brain would like to take a weight off –that I often still have to identify–, but it also creates nonexistent obstacles in front of it. Even if nobody would read the words coming out, I would really like to write them without thinking too much, but I end up overthinking it — as with many other aspects of my life.
Luckily, my mind doesn’t always act like a scumbag brain1. Sometimes, though rarely, to be honest, it is easy to put down a stream of thoughts. Maybe my approach is wrong. As with everything, writing takes practice.
As an exercise, after this short(?) reflection, maybe2 I will try to think less and write without stopping too much. Just do it, goddamnit.
🎧 Today I rediscovered Cloudkicker
📖 Still on Frankenstein