The One Thing that Jumpstarted my Writing
I keep telling myself I will write more. Yet, when I open up my laptop, I stare at my blank screen and something seems to put me off. I tried to get the words flowing but, nothing seemed to work very well.
So I went back to basics….
Pen and Paper. That’s it.
I picked up a pen, opened up a notebook and started writing.
There’s no big mystery here.
Writing blog posts by hand seems pretty absurd. Why wouldn’t one just want to type their posts up without having to write them out first and then re-typing them. Seems like a huge waste of time. But, for me it’s been a lifesaver.
I had the ideas and I know what I wanted to say but it just wouldn’t come out right.
So, one morning, I decided to keep the laptop closed. Unlike the rest of the people sitting at coffee shop, I pulled out my big fat notebook and pen. No technology on the table, whatsoever.
I started writing and haven’t stopped since. I managed to write over 15 posts in 10 days. That’s more than I’ve written in the last three months!!
Why I think Pen and Paper Helps
I’m technically a Gen Y, a very early model. I’m the kind of person who learned to write before typing. The kind of personal who still remembers using the 5-inch floppy disks. So, you can imagine that writing by hand comes naturally to me.
I love my paper planner, always use a yellow pad for meetings notes and am appalled that the Apple device is called a pencil when it has to be charged.
Writing long form by hand has a host of benefits and there are countless articles on the internet which explain why.
This is how I think it helped:
Creates uninterrupted flow.
You connect with the words and you don’t have urge to hit backspace every two seconds. You decide to write on and edit later. There are no distractions of spell checks because of typos.
Fewer fact-checking excursions
Let’s face it, we live in a time of instant gratification and if you access to something you’re tempted to use it. As you write on a laptop, your mind wanders and you feel like doing fact checks immediately which leads to…spending an hour on the internet and no writing.
Work anywhere.
No computers to plug in, no running out of battery power, no start up and shut down. You can literally work from anywhere.
Slowdown to speed up
Sometimes it’s important to “stop and smell the roses”. The act of writing by hand forces you to slow down. You brain connects better with your writing and soon you’ll be churning out more material in no time.
I don’t think writing out all your posts every time is efficient. This is just a techniques to jumpstart your writing when you’re in a slump. These days I’m taking to pen and paper to outline posts and then type them up.
If I go back into that slump mode, I know exactly what I need to do get myself to write again. All I will need to start writing again, is a pen and some paper.
