TL;DR: I want to be better at writing.

There are a lot of hard parts to writing though, a lot of road blocks I’ve encountered that have prevented me from writing more. Let’s start with

Finding a style

Hands down, this is the hardest part. I want to write, but I don’t know what to write about, and when I do know what to write about, I don’t have the energy.

Because having the energy would mean finding my folder where I keep my ramblings, reviewing how to write in Markdown, and then creating some paragraphs that hopefully fit together in some loose enough way that they don’t seem totally erratic.

Having a style streamlines all of this. If you scroll past some of my more previous ramblings, you might notice I’ve been trying to find a style that is A) reusable for multiple essays so that I don’t have to remember how to write, I can just start writing. And B) seems natural and fluid in it’s seperation of thoughts.

A lot of what I see when reading other essays is this strange staccato style where every sentence seems accented or like someone is trying to tell a joke with no story just a string of punchlines. I’ve tried this style and I’ve learned it’s not me. Most of my ideas don’t have a clear seperation between each other which makes this style difficult and leads me to

Edifying your thoughts

This is one of the benefits I’m hoping to gain from writing more (and eventually consistently better). A lot of the times when you sit down to start, you immediately hit this brain block of “I have something I want to say, but I’m not sure where to begin or how to say it.”. At which point you become frustrated with everything and either quit or write something that you know is not your best. So I constantly have to remind myself that

I’m not blogging, I’m writing

Blogging requires someone else, somewhere else, reading what you write online. No one’s reading my shit. I’m writing only to entertain myself and because it’s a skill that will help me, not only communicate better, but think better as my thoughts clarify when I’m not only thinking them, but also typing them.

And I can write anywhere. I don’t have to write here either, I can write on my phone, I can write in my notes, I can write in someone else’s notes. It all counts toward writing, which is my goal. Readers are not my goal.

Writing clarifies your ideas. Blogging amplifies your emotions (think twitter).

Picking a topic

This might seem the hardest, but once you don’t have to think about your style (how you’re going to write) and your thoughts seem clear (how you’re going to say it), finding something to write about is actually not difficult. Everybody has thoughts everyday that we think or say then throw in the disposal and move on. Instead of forgetting it, just stick one of those thoughts in your back pocket and ruminate on it over some time (that period of time might be minutes, hours, or days). Don’t just lick it and put it back like all your other ideas but dig into it.