Writing is like shitting

Advice for the creatively stuck :)

I’ve been creatively stuck for almost 2 weeks now. Couldn’t finish any decent writing. Been jumping around 10 half-baked ideas, and none seems to be taking off.

I felt defeated. ESPECIALLY when I’m doing this “Viết Đều và Hay” challenge with 64 of my Blogging Students.

Viết Đều và Hay is about 2 things:

1. CONSISTENCY (Đều): We’re publishing 1 piece of work every week for 12 weeks straight. The minimum goal to “complete the challenge” is 9 published posts. The only rule: never skip twice.

2. GOOD WORK (Hay): In the kickoff call of the challenge, I let everyone discuss what “good work” means to them. Everyone came up with and wrote down their own definition, and mine was: “Work that I can be proud of having created.”

I’ve always predicted that “Good Work” will be the trickier part of this challenge, because it is VERY VERY HARD to produce good work CONSISTENTLY.

If we imagine creating content is like playing professional football in Europe, creating “good work” is like game day - 90 minutes of sprinting 12 kilometers, battling the most physically gifted and well-trained bodies in the world.

You simply CANNOT do that every day.

To continue playing at that level (aka creating good work), you need recovery, then conditioning and strength training between games, and at the end of the season, you get a BIG break until you come back for pre-season.

Let’s see it from a more graphic perspective:

Producing high-quality work every week is just quite impossible (for me).

Good work, by my definition, is demanding. And even though I feel very accomplished whenever I finish a piece of classic, I am also intellectually and creatively exhausted.

And I’m not the only one. Exhibit #1 from my student:

So realistically, my graph looks like this after the first 4 months of 2024, trying to produce good work every week:

This pressure to create and publish good work consistently has pushed me to this point of creative burnout - lying on my couch in the scorching Sai Gon heat, questioning my own credibility to teach a course about writing sustainably.

“Viết Đều và Hay”

Then I remember the other part of this challenge - CONSISTENCY. I asked myself:

Can I practice what I always preach?
To aim not for perfection, but rather for consistency and progress.

This question helped me realize that unlike “consistency”, the concept of “good work” (hay) is very subjective and vague. You can’t really measure the quality of work to see if one piece is “good enough” or not.

You can only reliably measure your growth against CONSISTENCY.

So, I truly believe that writers have a much better chance of improving with a focus on consistency than a focus on “good work”.

The last metaphor I want to share with you in this messy piece is:

Writing is like shitting

When you’re writing, the goal is to present the messy thoughts in your head in neat, linear paragraphs.

When you’re shitting, the goal is to “export” the messy substances in your belly to “beautiful” shapes.

If the writing is good, it’s like you just took a massive shit. Your head is so light now because you’ve just created a personal mental model to think more clearly about the topic you just wrote about. Life is good.

But if the writing is bad, it’s like you’re having constipation. The messy thoughts brought about even more chaos, and cluttered your mind, preventing you from thinking clearly about anything else. Life is horrible.

The worst part is: this bad shit is blocking the flow of all the other incredible ideas you have - “the good shit”.

What can you do in this situation? My advice is:

Just shit

• Pick a schedule

• Write something

• Edit it

• Publish (or Shit)

There will be good shits. And there will be bad ones.

You cannot have a perfect record. And you shouldn’t aim for one.

Your goal, as an Internet writer, is to ship consistently.

You don’t write better by not shipping.

If you’re creatively stuck. Just ship something.

Sometimes, you need to “flush” a bad idea, so better ones can come.

Bài viết thuộc thử thách Viết Đều và Hay của Writing On The Net Alumni.
#wotn #vietdeuvahay