Write for 15 minutes, non-stop. That’s it.
Write for 15 minutes, non-stop. That’s it.
That is the goal I set for myself when I started today’s writing. To be honest, I still have no idea what is going to come out of my head. But now that you are reading this, I guess it did come out eventually. Congrats to myself for overcoming that mental hurdle!
I just realized I forgot to press the timer. See, we sometimes just need a tiny bit of push to get the momentum going. That push does not even have to be a “real one”. In my case, I forgot to press the timer but I kept on writing anyway. I am two paragraphs in, and the words are already starting to flow. The placebo push.
Writing is hard. Not in the sense that I can’t physically hold a pen or press down on a keyboard. It involves translating your brain signals into words. Sometimes, most of the time, that is effort, and effort requires brainpower. During times when my energy is low, journaling only burns me out even more.
But I am starting to think, that might not be entirely true. Effort is needed to kickstart the writing, that is for sure. Once it is begun, things start to flow more naturally out. What is the fuel consuming way to drive a car? To step on the brakes as soon as it starts to gain momentum. Same goes for the human mind. If I sabotage myself every once in a while, there is no way I am ever going to get things done. So long as I do not stop myself once I gain momentum, stopping becomes hard, and those to-do lists start to become shorter.
I have 5 minutes left. What should I write then? I guess nothing else other than reflecting on how amazing it felt for the past 5 minutes. Try what I did. Next time if you are feeling that mental block. Set a timer, start typing, even something as silly as “potatoes”. Get into the groove of writing. You will never know when you come up with a new potato recipe, or a fiction novel draft with a potato protagonist.
Time’s up. That’s it for me today. I can’t write about the same thing tomorrow anymore can I?