Problems All Writers Face
Learning to break mental blocks and unstuck yourself
What inpires you? Photo via Unsplash
In Pursuit of Writing ✍️
I’ve been writing off and on now for the better half of a decade. Mostly technical writing here on medium now a days, but over the course of the past few years, I’ve had a few articles published, some even showed up in printed magazines, and I was offered an opportunity in 2019 to take a risk and work on my first book.
In it for the long haul
I’m working on a new book now and it has me writing many nights and every weekend. This will be the longest thing I’ve ever written weighing in at around 400 pages (or more as there seems to be an endless amount of new content that fits the bill).
Understanding My Weaknesses
This project has taught me many things about myself, for instance I realized early on that I am terrible at estimating the actual time it takes to write each draft of a chapter. See, I have a problem context switching from left brain to right brain activities and the book I am writing is a hands-on book on Modern Data Engineering.
This means that each chapter has some flourish, setting up the chapter, connecting the dots from earlier chapters, laying a concrete foundation for more complex and advanced topics. But moving from the setup and the theory, to easily digestible “Fully functioning” code is always like pulling the ebrake at 90 miles an hour. I’m in for a bumpy and dangerous transition. Writing tutorials and trainings takes a surprising amount of time. When I used to present and do live trainings it would take around a month to put together the content and I would workshop the material at conferences and meetups sometimes for over a year like with the example below.
I also have ADHD and while that can help me focus, it also means I have to try harder to keep a train of thought, lest things fall apart due to simple distractions. I found that it helped to sit down to write, put on my headphones and just start writing off my outline. I wouldn’t stop to edit, reread or tweak anything until the idea was out.
Just get something on the page, since you can always go back and edit it later but interrupting the flow of words is usually a costly mistake.
Better Together
On the side of wins, I’ve had the pleasure of having conversations with other authors and editors during the past year and it’s been a great opportunity to learn about the publishing industry and what it means to be a writer in the competitive field of technology and computer science. I also became a technical reviewer for other embattled authors and it has been a nice 360 degree immersion into all sides and the many angles viewed and visited from first page to publication.
Through this process I’ve also had the opportunity to really reflect on my time spent teaching and giving tech talks and learned a lot about myself through the course of this journey. Part of me thinks this process has helped me grow as an author, part of me hates myself for even going down this path.
What is life but a balancing act between idle time and deadlines
The Struggle
The things I’ve struggled most with during the process have been finding inspiration, removing distractions from my writing environment, and learning to live with the healthy fear that no matter how many edits, and read throughs, that I’ll always find one or more things that I can tweak. A slight improvement here or there (I’m doing a meta edit as we speak). There is no perfect draft of a chapter.
I also learned that a good development editor is really key to help grind down and polish what feels horribly unfinished, slightly rushed and offer up simple suggestions that yield fantastic enhancements that would have never happened without the give and take.
Also communication is key, sharing my doubts, stress, writers block, new ideas and avenues of writers drift. Essentially, I brought traditional software feature creep into my writing as things were moving faster (from a technology point of view) and out pacing my ability to write and deliver new chapters that didn’t feel dated the day they were delivered.
Ultimately, I learned to share early and often, and looked forwards to the feedback, notes and conversations.
Let’s walk through what I’ve distilled as the problems all authors will face.
Inspiration
Most people get inspired by listening to music, going out, going on or even just planning a new and exciting adventure somewhere. Simply put we escape our normal lives and leave our emotional baggage at the door. Getting out to do something new and adventurous can naturally produce seratonin and dopamine, which trigger the brain to experience happiness, motivation and more importantly creativity. All which have been harder with the pandemic raging, so finding inspiration in the little things has been key.
This simple act can help to break up a day that could have otherwise be just a grind. If you don’t have the luxury of being able to just get up and take off then you can look for inspiration by getting up and leaving the room your writing in and just wait for inspiration to return. I will sometimes just wake up in the morning and I feel the words assembling into sentences and I have to write cause clearly it’s a words day.
It feels like a words day
Words Days
Word days, for me at least, don’t just happen all the time. I would love for them to just be everyday but as a mental process that I can’t control there is no way of arguing with it. Honestly, I think the words are really just the end result of the mind just chewing on a new idea and giving you no deadline, so it is always refreshingly serendipitous.
Unfortunately, writing has its ups and downs.
Distraction
There is no better problem left unsolved as there is with distraction. Since with enough distraction you’ll never remember where you began. Jokes aside, this is the part where I bring up my ADHD for the second time. It is easy for me to get distracted. I learned to fight it and also cater to it. I might find myself running some errand and suddenly I inspiration hits in unexpected ways, and this random serendipity seemed to be come alongside crushing fear and anxiety, running up to the deadline on a deliverable. I’d much rather be focused than distracted, but sometimes distraction is what the mind needs to complete a thought without “You” interrupting it.
In the End
I’m not done with the book yet. I’m close though and I’m doing the best I can to balance my career, family, friends and getting this book out without giving up cycles of rest and downtime or sacrificing my personal life in pursuit of publication. No one tells you that books are emotionally and physically demanding, and they yearn to be completed. But sometimes, it is good to just sit back, relax and write something else to help the words flow across a different medium.
