Motivation to write

Why I find it hard to write for this blog

October 03, 2024

On February 2023, I published my first post on this blog, after a major visual and technical overhaul. In that post, I said I’d try to continue posting somewhat frequently, even if just about some random thing I discovered that day. Well, as you can tell, that didn’t really go exactly to plan. In fact, it took me over a year to make the next post (which was pretty cool, you should check it out)!
In this one, I’m hoping to explain my very sparse posting.

# Ideas

The first step to a post is, of course, an idea; a good idea. Fortunately for me, ideas are pretty plentiful. Unfortunately for me, though, “good” ones are the polar opposite.

This issue mostly stems from the notion that I’m not bringing anything new and interesting to the table, thus making it fairly pointless to write a post. Who wants to read about this topic better covered by Wikipedia or by countless other more proficient bloggers?

But there’s more, of course. This is a bit hard to admit sometimes, even to myself, but I often worry about writing frankly stupid, incorrect or overall low quality stuff and ending up getting publicly embarrassed. I always strive to do things well, be it programming, cooking or even cleaning; writing is no exception. The prospect of making mistakes is one that often turns me into a passive agent instead of an active one in public scenarios. This is very wrong! You should be able to make mistakes, it’s only natural and an important step of learning. Yet, it is a legitimately hard thing to “fight” against. This pairs strongly with my previous concern and is, more often than not, the reason some ideas never see the light of day, and why I’ve only opted for very “safe” posts, so far.

Finally, I initially believed having essentially no audience was also a “big” issue, since putting effort into writing about a topic only to have it get lost in the void is a bit demoralizing. Discussion is good!
This is a very wrong position to adopt, though — writing for oneself can be a great tool for organizing thoughts and develop ideas, and eventually you may passively or actively build a readership and your posts end up becoming useful or interesting to someone else.

These are my main blockers on the idea side of the equation, which I’m trying to overcome.
What about the writing itself?

# Writing

If (and as we saw that tends to be a big “if”) I end up thinking the idea is good enough to be published to the world, I will start typing something – I open the project, create a new file, fill in the metadata, and…
._.
Starting is hard.

Eventually, your start getting into a groove and can produce more consistently, but the path there is tough for me, I lack a starting engine. 🙃 Adding onto this, I believe I have a somewhat peculiar writing process — I pretty much never write sequentially, instead jumping between sections a lot. The chaotic nature of coming up with ideas gets translated over to the writing process as well. At the beginning, it’s all a fuzzy cloud of thoughts which I have to jot down and only then start fleshing them out, one by one. Since I so often start from very raw and often spontaneous ideas, it is inevitable I will figure out something new, make a connection, back away from a line of thought, and thus be forced to jump somewhere else to address it. Sometimes I even end up realizing that what I’m writing is, after all, not right, useful or interesting, in which case the whole thing gets canned. Writing this post was no exception — I first wrote the opening paragraph, then some of this one before moving into the previous ones, and so on. This is, perhaps, a symptom of an untrained brain, and certainly feels like something I could change with some work. For now, it can often be a daunting task.

English is also not where I’m most comfortable in, despite being pretty fluent; I suppose Portuguese is too ingrained in my though process. This is a minor blocker, though.

# Closing up

Originally, this post was conceived as a longer exposition of the issues outlined above, but I eventually realized the post would take much longer than it what it has taken already (nearly 2 months!), so it was shortened, in spite of the strong internal pushback. I think it strikes a decent balance between detail and brevity. I’m hoping this will be a “gateway” post to start writing more often, hence why I wanted to get it out sooner than later.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts and get to know your writing process! Reach out directly to me or, if you’re comfortable with it, to my public inbox, both linked there 😄