Can you force overcome Writer’s Block??
Day 2
So, it’s been about 19hrs since I committed myself into writing something everyday for the next 365 days and I’ve already found myself asking more than a few times as to what I’ve gotten myself into now.. LoL
O well!!
It’s 4:28pm CST and here I am, writing this over glass of Stella Artois while I watch my 4yr old daughter, Myra, who’s enjoying her red dot ball tennis class (I made sure I brought my laptop with me here today). She’s a little firecracker!!
I met with my Design Lead and co-founder Andrew Verboncouer over Lunch today at Qdoba to go over a few items for our startup. And I told him about this 365-day Write.Something.Everyday quest I embarked on last night. I first met Andrew at a local meetup organized by Digital Fertilizer — a local chapter that promotes entrepreneurial and startup culture. I’ve known him for over 2 yrs now and We’ve been working on IRememba since Jun/2015 and I can safely say that we’ve become good buddies overtime.
Anyway, he knows that I’m just a common sense guy and not even close to a blogger or a writer. Heck, I’m not even a native English speaker. I’m a guy who was born and brought up in a small city (Kaithal) in Northern India and was working an IT job in New Delhi before moving to USA in Oct/2008.
I do have some writing “experience” though *I say this while letting a laugh out* I did write some “poems” (ha ha.. they aren’t really poems) in my teenage days and some in my 20s. That’s all the writing I’ve ever done. If you would like to check them out, They’re HERE (Yes! I preserved that Blog AS IS and Yes! it looks very cheesy ..Thanks for the compliment! :p)
Ok — back to my lunch talk with Andrew.
So, I tell him about this quest of mine and as usual, always says motivating things. But then he tells me about this app that starts deleting your work if you stop writing for more than 5 seconds. I was blown away and was like — Reallyyyyyy!!! 5 seconds!!!! THAT is too much pressure, man!! If/When I write, I sometimes pause to flush out my thoughts as best as I can and I can assure you that the pauses are more than 5 seconds long. And given that I’m not gifted in the patience department, I would get pissed if I’m writing and pause to gather my thoughts and the app starts deleting my work :O
…..not even close to phunny, bro!!
At that time, he couldn’t recall the name of the app. So, I did a little digging around (aka google search) and it’s called Flowstate aka The Most Dangerous Writing App. (nice!!)
Wired recently published a great informative post covering the app —
“DON’T STOP. IF you stop typing for more than five seconds, all progress will be lost.”
Flowstate strives to help you with overcoming writer’s block and is the handy work of Manuel Ebert, who describes himself as a “Ex — neuroscientist, data wrangler, designer and cofounder of summer.ai (sounds like a smart lad …eh!!)
Although it is an ingenious idea to brute force you into punching out a rough draft in one full swoop, as if you’re writing in a diary and flushing out a single stream of consciousness without giving it a second thought and keep all distractions of life at bay. However, for me personally, it somehow seems more like a punishment versus a disciplinary or a motivator. And I’m all against punishments approach.
Mashable and The Verge have also written about Flowstate and it does sound like a pretty Radically.Crazy.Awesome idea. I would have taken it for a test drive just for kicks, however, it seems like it’s only available on iOS and I’m a hardcore Android. (I do like apple, but only as a fruit that I eat)
I think the niche for that app isn’t (shouldn’t be) Writer’s Block. It should rather depicted more like “The Most Dangerous App for the ones whose morale only improves with beatings”… LoL
I see Writer’s Block as a Good thing. When I think of Writing and Writer’s block, I think of Working Out. When you start working out, things are hard and if you’re persistent and push thru, your overall health improves, you eat better, sleep better, look better and feel better. However, you do hit plateaus, you do hit those days when you can’t gather any motivation at all, you do hit those days when you feel lifeless, you do hit those days when you ask yourself why exactly are you doing this; and you want to find some excuses to just skip that day.
Too many skips and you’re back to square one. But, some of those days, you push thru and at the end of your workout, are happy that you didn’t give in. And sometimes, you need to listen to yourself and see if you actually need a break. However, the onus lies with you to understand when to keep pushing and when to catch a break. That little break can sometimes do wonders to your motivation and prevent any burn-outs.
That’s exactly how I see a Writer’s Block — Only you can figure for yourself what’s a good block and what’s a bad block.
Well at least that’s how I see it.
If you have any tricks for overcoming writer’s block or know any such apps that help you build better writing habits, please do share in the comments.
Cheers!
