You live in the problems you decided to build.

— Used for Glue, Rival Schools

Today I checked my writings directory and found a lot of unfinished stuff, all sorts of TeX files left abandoned, drafts of short stories or maybe novels I started only to feel unsure how to continue.

This is a weird pattern I’ve tended to follow all my life. As much as I’ve always enjoyed blogging, when it comes to longer writings I seem unable to proceed after a bunch of pages. Why is that? Could this be the real reason why I can’t write for a living?

I often question my ability to write. I never stop working on my style, my voice, and my choices. I also know well that I’m quite far from being a great writer, but this has never stopped me from trying my best at it.

And yet, I can’t shake the feeling that whatever I’m working on isn’t what I as a reader would really love to spend my time with. If I look closer at all my drafts, two of them strike me as projects with a structure, that is a beginning, an end and something in between. I even have chapters titles for one of them. But as I read them all over again, what is already there is not enough to please me.

My partner often tells me: “Keep writing”. Which means: “Keep putting into words whatever you have in mind and fine tune later”. This is what I usually do, though. For example, I rarely get what I want from a blog post in a single run. I may write some ideas, tweak them, leave them there for hours or even days at times, and get back to them with a fresh mind to see if it all still makes sense.

However, those TeX files are a different matter altogether and to conquer the blank page I have to identify the actual problems I have with it.

First, I aim way too high by drawing comparisons with authors I love on every line. This is the perfect recipe for failure. How is one supposed to finish a chapter when all they’re thinking about is what a different writer would do?

The second mistake I make is believing I know the approximate total number of pages I would like to have. Setting a target such as this makes me only feel distant from the target itself, because at every step my mind goes to what’s left to write to reach the ideal number.

The final and biggest issue is that I approach these writings rushing to complete them, so when after ten pages I notice I’m only halfway through the second chapter I give up and put everything aside.

Given I identified the problems, the solutions may be just around the corner:

  • forget about other authors and write for myself with what I have. There is always room for improvements later;
  • forget about the number of pages and just write anything that comes to mind. There is always room for improvements later;
  • sit down calmy in front of the blank page. Nobody is pressuring me to finish anything because noone is out there waiting to publish my work. There is always room for improvements later.

So, yeah, basically my partner is right and there’s really just one thing I have to do: keep writing.