Well, in last week’s post, I said that worst case scenario I could always write about whatever was on my mind on Sunday night. I wasn’t planning on doing that, but it’s Sunday and it’s 8:57 pm, and that is what I intend to do now. To be more precise, I would like to write a bit about what I wanted to do, and why it was hard, and maybe if I understand it better I can plan better for next week.
I didn’t forget that I had decided to write one post a week and that my deadline was Sunday. I’ve been thinking all week about it, and thinking about what to write. And I’ve had a lot of ideas, which maybe I should add to potential essays. However, the problem is, unsurprisingly, execution.
Every time I think of an idea for a blog post, I think in my mind it is an ideal, abstract, post. It’s not that I think of all the thing it must say and it is daunting. No, what is daunting is making it that concrete. In my mind, I can see the following phases to writing a blog post (this is highly simplified, specially becase I have very little experience):
- I think of an idea that makes me go “oh that would be interesting to write and share”
- I think of what things I find interesting about it
- Maybe I think of an structure? I think this can be improvised but it can also help
- I sit down and write
The part where I’m blocked at the moment is between steps 1 and 2.
I think I’m also blocked between steps 2 and 3 as well, because there is one post in particular where I already talked about it with my girlfriend and I came up with ideas and noted them down, but I haven’t written them into a blog post yet.
Right now (posts 1-5), it seems that at least I’m being able to go directly to step 3. That’s good, that is potentially the most important part, at least for now. The whole point of this is to make step 3 second nature, to make it trivial, and to see if I enjoy what happens afterwards. So it’s good that I practice it a lot and it’s what I intend to do by posting one post a week until I get to 100.
However, as I wrote last week, I would like to do something beyond that. Ideally, I would like to be able to write about things that I find interesting in my day to day, not the first thing that comes to mind when I sit and write. Or maybe not, who knows, maybe improvisation is what it’s all about and I’m focusing too much on planning ahead my writing. I guess we’ll see.
What I know is, I have ideas of things I want to write about, so I want to be able to write about them. That is why writing in general is something that interests me. So even if I end up deciding what to write about in the moment where I sit down to write, I think I would like to make sure that what I end up writing is one of the topics I find interesting. After all, I don’t want to write about writing forever.
So, what is the plan?
I think that, in order to streamline going from step 1 to step 2, I will (1) note down my ideas in potential essays to have a list I can look at and reference, and (2) I’m going to try to separate my “thinking of what I find interesting about it” from my actual weekly writing.
I will publish one blog post a week, that is for sure. If none of my developed ideas sounds appealing or developed enough, I can improvise. If one of them does however, I can write and expand on it. In the meantime I can develop all my ideas separately.
I’m not sure if this will be really helpful to be honest. I think it could be more helpful to designate one day a week for writing, preferably earlier in the week. Maybe I won’t end up publishing that day, but it can be the first day where I give an initial attempt to step 2 and see how it goes. I like that. Let’s say Wednesdays will be my writing day. Potentially I’ll also follow the plan from above, but I think this will be more helpful.