The Uneasiness of Starting to Write
As a new writer, I have been able to enjoy the pleasure and advantages that come with writing. Those are priceless as they have contributed to me figuring out what I want to do and organize my life much better than I ever have.
However, one other thing I have noticed is the uneasiness that comes with writing in front of others. Writing online means showing yourself without have anybody look straight back at you. This should make it much easier to write (as we can see with trolls all over the internet), but by trying to show my true self, inspire and share my bit of knowledge, I have found that on the contrary, I end up trying to push the writing away.
Now don’t get me wrong, when I get to it, I am loving writing and enjoying every second of it. And then, I don’t forget this. But the hard part is getting to it.
By reading so inspiring and so beautiful posts around, I tend to feel like I could never write such posts. So when I want to write, if I start thinking too much in details, I will start feeling unease and end up procrastinating it.
But nothing comes from procrastination (if not some more procrastination!).
This is how I have decided to ignore my feelings. I have set myself to post 4 times a week (Mon, Tue, Wed, Sun) with each of those days a different topic (respectively: Writing, Language-learning, 4-character-expressions in Japanese, Self-improvement). However, I have also set myself to write every single day. This means that I have to set time for writing every day and plan ahead to counterbalance every day during which I may not find the time.
Despite setting time for it (Early morning), I often end up considering pushing this to a later point in the day. This is when I take a deep breath during which I remember why I wanted to write in the first place, count down from 5 and then just do it.
And then, it’s on… until the “end” of my post. I usually end up considering whether what I wrote really matters, whether anybody would be interested in it.
In those cases, I have found that remembering the weird things I researched in the past helps.
I have searched for extremely “niche” things which wouldn’t interest many people (among others: Ainu, Esperanto, types of Ocarinas existing, violin music remixes of old games, etc). And I always found an answer, someone online who wrote about it, gathered the data I was looking for.
So I think to myself “What if I ended up being that one ‘ savior’ to someone one day?” and I post.
Just as a short sum-up to both myself and whoever will read this, here’s how to overcome that uneasiness that comes with starting to write:
- Set up a time,
- Remember why you started
- Enjoy the process itself and remember that you enjoyed it
- Know that there will always be a potential audience
Originally published at yuhakko.wordpress.com on November 19, 2018.
