100 Days

A daily blog against writer's block

DRAFT

Let me start by saying that I don't believe in writer's block. While it is describing something very real, I think it's a label that obscures what is really going on, and that it's used as an excuse to hide behind. If it's treated like a flu, it's something you can't do much about other than waiting until it's over. But at its core, writer's block is just a symptom of fear.

For the last three months (maybe even longer) I have been writing for one hour per day. During that time, I have published exactly four posts. This isn't because the posts I finished were long and intricate (they weren't), or because I am a slow writer (even though I am). The main reason is that I find it difficult to finish posts I have started. In the last two months alone, I have written seven more drafts that I simply abandoned. For the few posts I finished, it took me an almost insurmountable amount of fiddling until I was ready to publish them. Both of these behaviours are motivated by the same thing: I'm afraid to publish something that isn't good, that what I publish might look bad.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to get better and to look good at the same time. Therefore, the best thing to improve, is to stop thinking about how you will look like. To put this in context, there's a study I heard referenced so often it borders on cliché. The study is about a pottery class that is learning to make vases. In this study, the class was split into two groups. At the end of the semester, the first group was rated on their best vase. It didn't matter how many vases they made, all that counted was their best attempt. The second group was rated on the number of vases they did. Quality didn't matter. So while the first group worked meticulously on their one attempt for the whole semester, the second group just made vase, after vase, after vase. At the end of the semester, the quality of the vases between both groups was compared. And surprisingly (unless you heard of this study before, which you probably have), the second group made better vases. What we can learn from this is that you get better by repetition, not by endless fiddling.

Even though I had heard of this study time after time, I ignored it for my own blog. The thought of daily blogging came to my mind from time and time, and I usually dismissed it. But lately, I have been feeling stuck again. So this time, I dug deeper, and seriously considered all the justifications I came up with why daily blogging was such a bad idea. Taking each point in isolation, I realised, they were not really issues, but just my fear speaking. And the best thing to do if you are scared of something is to face it and take action. This is exactly what I'm doing with this project. In the next 100 days, I will publish one post per day here. I don't know what to expect from it, and I'm sure that some posts will be horrible. But I'm not doing this to look good. I'm doing this to become a better writer.

100 Days

A daily blog against writer's block

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