Writer's Block: Comfort is the Enemy

Actually, I didn’t feel like posting anything until I encountered this post that inspired me to shitpost. I just came up with the title randomly.

Notes: I didn't post this at community pages because it's personal rambling blog. I like the visibility but there's nothing pleasant about posting wall of texts for curators reading. I'm all about wall of texts.

My formula for dealing with a writer’s block is seeking out the why of things. It’s always about finding out the why for everything. Why do I do this even if it’s irrational? Why do I pursue this course of action? Why am I motivated to accomplish this? If the answer to the why reaches a satisfactory point, when it is indeed the reason, then I deliberate whether the root of the why even matters?

It’s easy for me to shitpost. Have a prompt, open peakd and just ramble about the subject regardless of how disorganized my thoughts can be but there’s an inherent objective that underlies all my shitposting. I don’t want my muscle memory to fade. Let me take you down to memory lane when I was in one of my lowest points, it’s not a sad story.

One of my side gigs while on grad school was a ghostwriter for another ghostwriter (it’s complicated). I was riding on their name so each work I do they get a 30% cut. Now you may think it’s a bad deal when I could just cut out the middleman and take in the full pay but that’s not how the business works in freelance, at least the side where I’m exposed to. You need a network and a name to get by and I don’t have the time to build one while juggling with school and other side gigs.

The pay is crap but the experience was life changing enough to give me the grit I need to toughen it up. When you’re required to write 6 articles with 500 words each daily using SEO keywords that makes no absolute grammatical sense and the employer expects you make quality content like an expert wrote on the subject, learning new things on a fast track is hell. But this is the daily grind of working as a freelance, you may or may not have any control over what you write and your fixed pay depends on your employer accepting the work. I repeat, 3k to 6k words daily about random subjects set by the assignment.

I’m going make a slight insert here for entitled hive users when they think their quality content feels ignored. I think they’re weak shits that need to grow up and maybe try to work with a demanding employer that criticizes your works down to the last grammar for a small pay. That’s the reality working freelance from a developing nation, you’re not the only candidate that wants to lowball their expertise in writing to get the job and employers can ghost you or bargain your rates because they know they can find someone else who will do it cheaper.

This is my controversial view about seeing bloggers on Hive complain why their blogs get no support, it’s not even commercial quality and you’re just talking about what you did over some park or a review about a niche subject majority can’t even relate but that is your experience.

There’s no quality assurance officer to drop you a comment to fix this section of the blog here. You’re on your own and nobody gives you an industry level feedback. But those upvotes somehow convinced you that getting paid for your personal blogs here means you can make it out there (maybe). If your assignment was to write 10k words for 3-5 days about an ebook on a subject you barely knew anything, expect some hours will be spent on learning and no actual writing done. This on top of your other side gigs and school. Did I mention I was in medschool? Do it or your fired.

There are article spinner apps out there but my stupid pride says I shouldn’t take the easy route. If I have to dedicate 2-4 hours of my time learning about the joys of using dildos and imagine what it feels like to have a vagina, I will learn it low key at the back of the class just to get the shit done because I need the money. From garden gazebos to bizarre topics that are out there, I think my employer just like to shit test how far I could go because I know the assignments I get are the ones that were rejected by other writers on the team. It’s either I’m privileged to be the reliable last person when everyone else fails or my employer hates me but I don’t care, as long as I get paid on time I’m good.

Ok, so maybe I did a lot of rambling and segway the topic but the message is there. Why do I kept on writing daily even when I’m sick, don’t feel like writing, or just stuck for hours in a writer’s block but manage to deliver my assignments on time. Because I need the money. I didn’t work because there was a money problem, I worked because I convinced myself that I had a money problem now and will persist in the future therefore I struggled when my benefactors provided me more than enough.

In a time when I had to stop schooling because dad had an accident that bankrupt the family from the medical care, relatives were kind enough to sponsor my schooling. So when I got the chance to leave home when things got stable, I sought work as a telemarketer, and ghostwriter. I continued these gigs even when I got back into medschool and only had to drop the telemarketing thing when my schedule couldn’t accommodate it. Folks didn’t know I was hustling it because they’ll convince me to stop.

There was no need for me to push myself when everything was well provided in my life despite things going south previously but if I didn’t learn from the past, I’ll be fucked again in the future. Imagine your future being held hostage by the whims of your benefactors? At the mercy of some external force that you may lose favor? Call me distrustful but I want active agency on the course of my life right after some life changing events that pushed me into a corner where what I learned most from school don’t count for shit in the real world.

There was weight in the consequences if I can’t meet a deadline. I didn’t have the luxury to sob if I have to sacrifice study time or the assignment is too hard to crunch in a few hours within 24 hours. It just had to be written and there were times when I intentionally just submitted works with errors because the quality assurance officer will reject my work and give me another 24 hours to work on it but that delay gives me extra time to study the subject, this is strategic procrastination 101.

I don’t have time to think about writer’s block, I got an imaginary rent to pay and an imaginary life where I get kicked out and live hungry over the streets if I lose this job. And because I know I don’t need this job and can quit anytime, all the more reason why I need to focus on getting the work done. Comfort is the enemy and it manifests in the form of writer’s block for me. No employer to monitor your progress, no deadlines to mind, and you’re just free to post whenever you feel like it. My why is the having the mindset that I will get the imaginary consequences if I do fail at delivering work.

Not many can develop this mental skill called focus because why would you opt to do the things that make you suffer when you can do away with those and be carefree? At my lowest points, I saw what needed to be change and that is being too comfortable. Comfort is when you know you can be lazy for a few days to months and still have a roof and food served to you. You don’t develop that backbone because you know someone is going to save you even if you don’t change.

Whenever someone says they have a writer’s block and still want to write, I wonder where is this block coming from and whether there is a need to write in the first place? Write when you feel like it or write when you need to? There’s no employer you have to answer to if your grammar isn’t the best and your content will be judged like how normal people judge social media content. I can relate to the part where people get a writer’s block when there’s an assignment that has a deadline or you’re fired. Like, how the hell am I supposed to convince marijuana is the shit you have to try before you die because it’s the good stuff when I never had that experience, but I have to write like I know. I do not miss those days when I have to write marketing lies but it did give me an insight to the people falling for those lies thinking there’s an expert writing behind the name. All that fluff of words was meant to showcase one method of removing a writer’s block, my way. Ask the why of why you write.

Challenge yourself to write 1 or 2 articles daily with 2.5k to 5k words each. Do this for more than a year without fail. If you want some training wheels, don’t do it during weekends and holidays. Just write, don’t publish what you write, because you’re not doing it for other people to see, you do it for yourself. Sounds hard right? Why would you bother submitting yourself to that much stress and get no compensation in the form of votes for doing the exercise? Well, it was never about self-improvement then, it was just for the votes. It wasn’t about developing a marketable skill you can be proud even if Hive wasn’t around. It was just for the votes that made you write. The source of the motivation was external validation. That’s what separates other bloggers who do things for a hobby, they don’t need to get paid to express their views online.

I can’t relate to the reason behind most people’s writer’s block because that’s a personal experience. You want to write but you also need to impress? You want to impress therefore you need to write? Now switch the word want with need or vice versa. Then switch again with purpose over intended outcome. I play with the words to find the reason why I write whenever I encounter my own writer’s block. I get a writer’s block on some shitposting sessions because I forgot my end objective for the post and rediscovering it again only to find those 4k words I wrote didn’t matter, erase. For every shitpost published here is a ratio of 1:7 of drafts unpublished and discarded.

(2) Here's another approach to a writer’s block, whenever you consume content you like, do you ever run out of words of praise for it? The words just flow when someone asks about why you like or dislike a content you are invested on. Find a subject you like, a movie, music, experience then just write short sentences relating to it then start building an outline that serve as your mini prompt. It doesn’t need to be complete, just phrases that prompt a thought in you to think even more about the subject and see where your thinking goes.

(3) Daydream and ruminate over an idea lost at your own sea of thoughts. Think or random words and pair them up, from experience “regarding death” led me to think about suicide, then read more articles about depression, then read more articles about researches pertaining to neurobiochemicals related to death, psychiatric disorders and predisposition about death, anecdotes, culture views on death until I arrived at my own schematic diagram about suicide and an algorithm of prevention. I was making this pyramids and organizational chart like patterns over the course of the thinking and the ideas just flow then it’s easy to write about it.

(4) If imagination isn’t your strength, go for a grounded approach by just story telling a previous experience. If your main objective is to impress curators, forget about it. Someone out there can sensationalize the mundane better than you. If your objective is just to get a post out, just retell about your day and add some opinions or lessons learned from the snippets of experience. This is probably the most cost effective advice because it uses less mental resources as you’re trying to recall a memory than generating ideas from nothing. If you were asked how you felt when you took a dump at the bathroom, there was cramping, but it felt like a great weight had been lifted. You mention how regretful you were eating your grandma’s curry while purging. I just made that scenario up and didn’t deviate from the ordinary. There’s no need to be flamboyant about your storytelling if you’re just trying to post for a quota or something. People will just read it and make their impression if they like you enough.

(5) Forget all the methods I mentioned above and continue finding your own remedy for writer’s block. These are just my own tools that work for me. When I started this shitpost, I just made a mental target of 1k words but it ended up twice in a span of minutes without me noticing. I consider this an outcome of years spent writing as if my next meal dependent on it. It’s just mental muscles at work letting some thoughts flow. If I was back at my game, I’d probably improve my grammar but I answer to no employer for I have become one of Hive’s shitposters.

If you made it this far reading, thank you for your time.