Tag Archives: writing-process

The best paper (n)ever written

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Anyone who writes regularly understands writer’s block. It is a scary thing to face and when you are in it, it feels like there is no escape. So when I heard of this paper, I had to look it up:

JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 1974, 7, 497 Number 3 (FALL 1974)

THE UNSUCCESSFUL SELF-TREATMENT OF A CASE OF “WRITER’S BLOCK’‘
Dennis Upper

No abstract, and completely blank other than the word ‘REFERENCES’, of which there are none. A foot note mentioning that portions of this paper were NOT presented at a conference, and one more thing that makes this priceless:

COMMENTS BY REVIEWER A

“I have studied this manuscript very carefully with lemon juice and X-rays and have not detected a single flaw in either design or writing style. I suggest it be published without revision. Clearly it is the most concise manuscript I have ever seen—yet it contains sufficient detail to allow other investigators to replicate Dr. Upper’s failure. In comparison with the other manuscripts I get from you containing all that complicated detail, this one was a pleasure to examine. Surely we can find a place for this paper in the Journal—perhaps on the edge of a blank page.”

I can’t decide what I like best about this, the originality of the paper itself, the brilliance of the reviewer, or the fact that it was published.

I wish that I was clever enough to have written this when I was stuck with writer’s block! 😆

Add title. Start writing…

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These are the words I’m greeted with every morning.

Add title

Start writing….

I open the Jetpack App on my phone, click a little plus sign in the bottom corner and choose ‘Post’ to get my blog post going. On weekends I have a morning schedule that doesn’t allow me to write early, because I’m not choosing to get up at 5am. But my Monday to Friday morning schedule is bathroom, change for my workout, go downstairs to the couch and open the app.

I marvel how sometimes the muse hits me and suddenly I’m 300 words in and already know how I’ll end, and sometimes I’m fighting with myself to focus and not allow my phone to be a distraction as I sit staring at ‘Add title’. Sometimes a title is all I need to complete my day’s writing, and sometimes I change the title after writing something that meandered away from what I thought I was going to write.

Add title. Start writing….

Sometimes this is a warm, comforting invitation, sometimes a cold, daunting challenge. And no matter what it feels like, I write… I’ve seen that prompt about 2,400 times in the last 6 and a half years, and I still want to see it every day.

The struggle is real

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Today I wanted to quit. I’ve procrastinated for over an hour and a half, and my morning routine will be incomplete. Doubt kept circulating in my head. I feel like I have absolutely nothing to say. It’s been six plus years of writing every day… maybe today it ends. Done.

Well, the fact that these words are written here says that I beat today’s demons. That said, it feels painfully cliche to write about how hard it is sometimes to write. Trite.

It’s a day to remember that if every day was easy it wouldn’t be worth doing. A day to remember that it’s not every day that we can do our best work, and in fact 50% of those days will be our worst 50%. You can’t do better than that on average, the math doesn’t math.

My fingers are moving, words are appearing before me, constructed from thoughts in my head, and another Daily-Ink will be published. I didn’t quit. I also didn’t add any real qualitative value, but I didn’t quit.

Tomorrow will be easier. I say that rather unconvincingly, but with honest hope. Sometimes the blank screen is daunting, and painful to look at. It’s a prison wall more than a screen. Today was one of those days. I’ve scaled the wall, not step by step but word by word, flowing better now because the page is no longer blank. The prison break was successful.

But am I really free? Is my choice to write daily an opportunity for artistic expression, or is it a life sentence? Today it feels like the latter. When that feeling comes more than 50% of the time, I will need to consider freeing myself, but for now I’ll keep writing.

Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.

Ink is ink is ink

When I started my daily ink, I really thought I could do a daily hand-written journal and that I could stick with it. But the reality is that despite wanting to live in both worlds: http://daily-ink.davidtruss.com/daily-ink-both-worlds I am very tied to the digital world! I walk around with my phone, I don’t walk around with my journal. I went away on a retreat last week and took my journal with me. I didn’t feel like writing on the long journey, and was fully occupied on my holiday while there… thus no daily-ink. I came back and left my journal in my travel bag, which I just found today almost a week later. Ooops!

I really like the idea of finding time each day to write something even though I’m a slow blogger and will often go a week or two before crafting something for my Pairadimes blog: http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com I also like to post links! I like my ideas to be connected to other ideas. So, with that in mind, I still want to try and continue with my daily ink but sometimes, or rather most times, it will be digital ink and sometimes it will be on paper and hand-written in my messy printing. But the reality is that in some ways ink is ink and it doesn’t matter what medium I use, but in other ways digital print really is different!