The first story I wrote on Medium got curated. I was genuinely blown away. My understanding was Medium was like a magazine with editors and getting published felt so good.
Obviously this positive validation made me write some more and eventually a number of my articles got curated and I was even accepted to be an editor for a publication. That’s a lot of progress in a very short time: four months to be precise.
Now, however, I feel like there is the pressure of living up to a certain standard and if I don’t get into one of the publications or get curated, I feel like I’ve done something wrong. So every time I think about writing a post for Medium, I freeze up and that’s not a good thing.
The pressure to create and churn out good content can be overwhelming. Often enough I have good ideas but, after three or four paragraphs, I feel like the idea loses momentum and I don’t have a clue as to what I’m saying anymore. It’s at this point that I start to look at the word count and keep wondering how much further?
This is not a good situation to be in.
Another ugly situation is when you’re writing to please people. I realize that we all write for an audience and the basic idea of publishing content is for it to appeal to people. But that shouldn’t be at the cost of losing your voice. I agree, you’re not writing in your journal but, I also think that you’re not writing an instruction manual.
Sometimes it seems like I’m writing what I think others want to read instead of writing what I think or feel. Writers say what they want to say. It’s up to us to read it and decide whether we like it or not. None of my blogs are aimed at making a full-time income. I write because I love it so why am I thinking that I need to sound commercial?
I need to get past these issue and write again. I am prone to procrastination but, understanding the reason for it is the first step to progress. Isn’t it?
Looking through a frosty window... 