The Start of Something New
“Writing is the way of the world.” There are not many things truer than that. We write to explain to our friends around the globe how we feel. We write in order to educate, to garner respect, to champion change. We put our scientific discoveries onto paper to be read and compounded on by other scientific discoveries, culminating in a world of scientific advancement. We write as a way to express our inner callings; we write as a way to cope with the broad spectrum of emotions we feel. In this way, I’ve deeply respected writers, and I wish to improve my mastery of the quill.
There is another thing that has really struck a chord with me and fueled my adoration for the craft. It’s a quote that I heard one day from a podcast or video (I can’t pinpoint where it came from), and it’s this: “Not all intelligent people can write, but people who can write are intelligent.” From that day on, I strived to be a better writer and be one of those intelligent people.
I often face challenges when writing, however, and recently I’ve felt these challenges at their greatest intensity. To preface, I’m ambitious. I’m highly critical of myself. I often compare myself with others, and a negative voice in my brain often tells me that I’m not smart enough, quick enough, or hardworking enough. This gets in the way when it comes to writing.
Let me walk you through what happens in my mind a lot of the time when I write:
- I put down a phrase or two.
- My conscience gets cloudy because, ohoho, the negative voice comes in and takes up a good chunk of space in my thought process. It begins to tell me that I’m not as linguistically-inclined as some other people I know (who are my age and are amazing writers). I get sad at the fact that there are people out there who are better than me, and this poses a huge barrier to getting into the flow of writing.
- At the same time, another voice comes in, and this one is the perfectionist voice. It used to manifest in the way of “perfect first sentence syndrome,” but that is not very relevant for me now; now, it’s about comparison. I begin to think that my writing progress is too slow. I begin to think that other people, if they were tackling the same task, would do it in a much better way than me. I’m impatient at my lack of mastery and frustrated by that fact.
- Bogged down by these overbearing, negative thoughts, I put my head down and sulk for a bit. Then I put off the writing task for another time when I’d be in a “better state of mind.” I do this after a lot of internal debating because I know that if I do this, I’ll feel disgusting, as I hate being someone who lacks better discipline.
To ease my way over the mountain of negativity that frequently spawns when I start to write, I’m setting a challenge for myself. I’m going to write every day for two weeks (so ending on August 16), and allow myself a maximum of three days off from that goal. I’m going to write on whatever topic I want to. But it should be high-quality and it should be genuine.
I’m hoping that by writing and publishing more content, I can increase my confidence in my writing ability, which would push down on those negative thoughts. Moreover, I can stretch my writing muscles. Doing it here, on Medium, makes me accountable to you all. :)
I’m naming this project Project WRIT=E: writing, reform, iteration + tenacity = excellence.
I encourage you to join me with WRIT=E. If you do, let me know how it’s going through the comments (doesn’t matter if you’re starting it way after I’ve published this article), or even create your own article. :)
