Now that it's been a billion years since I last published any writing—thanks to volunteering commitments and depression—it's time to revisit my writing structure.

• My diarrhoea blog will continue (or resume, depending on how you look at it), but in a cheaper and more accessible place.
• My Trello board, full of half-written articles, will need a clean-out, whether that means finishing and publishing pieces, chucking them in purgatory my backlog, or deleting them.
• I'll need to get some more writing up on Medium. One article per century isn't exactly a streak.
• BigBeefBurger.com will need more substance, and perhaps repurposing.
• I should be using this blog (right here, hello, hi) to talk myself back on my feet.

Depression be damned. I enjoy writing too much to watch it fester.

To build myself up to a consistent and reliable level of productivity, I’ve taken to allocating 30–60 minutes to sit/stand in isolation and write nonstop. Mostly I’ll pull a topic off my Trello board and riff on it, but sometimes I’ll just type whatever’s in my head and follow my thoughts wherever they go. So far it’s working incredibly well, at least in terms of turning my ideas into properly articulated arguments.

This was always the purpose of my private stream-of-consciousness journal. What I’ve realised this week is how effectively it can turn an unproductive morning or day into a productive one. If the first ten minutes are rubbish, usually I’m much better structured and more cogent by the end.

Although I now have the bones of a few solid posts, tidying them up for publication is still beyond me, for now. This is as much down to my neurodivergent struggles as my need to build skills and establish habits.

I’m still reluctant to set myself goals for publishing on Medium because I don’t know when I can find the focus and confidence to get that final polish done. I’d like it to be within a week, but if I set that goal and fail to meet it, I’ll feel worse about myself and less confident about my ability. So, for now I’ll keep doing this as often as possible. If I write 50 drafts and publish nothing, at least I’ll have 20 posts close to completion.

When I decided to write again, it was the joy of writing that drew me back.

Then I discovered the possibility of writing on sites like Medium, where writing is read and a small amount of money might even come in. But I was still focused on writing for my own satisfaction.

Then I read a bit more about how a few writers have made a career from writing on Medium. I watched loads YouTube videos on form, audience, titles, the lot. But I still knew I wanted to write for its own sake.

Then I realised my writing can develop and improve if I work on it, so I made piles of notes about how best to write for success. I would definitely work that into my plan, but it would only ever come second to writing for pleasure.

I spent the next week or so coming up with ideas, building structures and salient points through brainwashing and bullet points. I even tried writing complete articles from those notes, but I couldn’t get a piece finished to my self-imposed standards. It was increasingly frustrating to be sat down, focused, determined, but not able to produce anything worthy of publication.

Here I am a month later (including two weeks of illness), only just realising that my aim has shifted. I’ve been so hellbent on writing to a high standard that I’ve still not published anything on Medium.

So, in remembering my incentive to write in the first place, and realising how sharply and unexpectedly I’ve lost my way, I’m now wrenching myself back on track. That doesn’t mean I’ll have something up on Medium tomorrow or even this week, but it does mean I’ll publish what I like writing without too much second-guessing, not what I think will set me up for some objective judgement of success.

It seems my inability to write this past week was due to illness.

At first I thought the ADHD medication wasn’t working. Then I thought I was just terrible at writing. It’s only yesterday that I realised I’ve been sick, and not only last week. I was struggling to focus in a volunteering engagement a couple of weeks ago. Looking back, it’s been obvious I was fighting off a virus, I just didn’t connect the dots.

This is a sequence which happens to me at least once every year: enduring brain fog, followed by frustration and fear that I can’t get things done, followed by the creeping realisation that I was unwell the whole time. Usually the trigger is a sore throat, or sinus pain, or noticing that I’ve had 12 hours of sleep three nights running.

Today I’m feeling more switched on than I have in about a week, so perhaps I’m recovering. Now I’m finding myself pulled between the need to rest patiently and the drive to get some work done. Some of the brain fog is still there, so rest might win for the time being.

That’s not to say I ground to a halt. I’ve had ideas and made plenty of notes, and dealt with another WordPress technical issue which hoovered up the best part of two days. So, there’s definitely been progress, just not the kind of progress you can see.

In doing research for my return to writing, I was aware early on that publishing on a site like Medium, where actual people will be offered my work, would require more work. I’d need to address an audience, rather than write introspectively (as I’m doing here). I’d need to work hard on my titles and plan SEO keywords.

Now that I’m in the thick of it, as it were, I’m realising how great that difference is.

When I write here and on my WordPress blog, I assume someone might see it eventually, but it doesn’t matter a great deal because I’m not using these outlets to grow a following or trust. I’m just writing for me.

However, if Medium is to be worthwhile for me at all, I can’t throw up even a half-cooked idea. I see loads of underdeveloped writing on Medium, which leaves me disinclined to read more of that person’s work. If I rush headlong into Medium, I’ll have exactly that impact on most people who see what I’ve published.

I already knew all that. What I didn’t anticipate is how much harder it would be to write to that standard.

Having an idea which I think would appeal to Medium readers isn’t difficult for me, but shaping it into a compelling piece is really quite a steep learning curve, and I don’t know why—it’s not at all far removed from the kind of writing I’ve done for ages, professionally and personally.

Word count also seems to be an issue. The piece I tried to write yesterday didn’t even hit 300 words, which is a pretty short piece for Medium (I’m aiming for at least 700 words, in line with the typical minimum length of good Medium posts). Forcing it to blow out in size led me to expand it in a way I’d already decided was deviating from the focus of that piece, but I did it anyway to boost that word count, and my concentration and purpose quickly drained away. (By contrast, this post hit 500 words inside 20 minutes.)

Yesterday, in trying to understand why my brain wouldn’t perform, I Googled the causes behind brain fog. Most of the results were hilariously useless to neurodivergent people (and I might write a Medium piece on that, if I shape it into anything at all—see above), but I saw anxiety mentioned a couple of times. It’s possible that anxiety is what stops me developing ideas for Medium but allows me to pump out posts for my personal blogs.

It’s probably foolhardy of me to think I can identify what’s preventing me publishing something to Medium, because trying to analyse my roadblocks and failures usually ends up being a failure in itself. This is especially difficult because I know the next failure will hit me harder than yesterday’s, and I could very well reach the point of packing it in and being lost in the dark yet again.

There are days when my brain is firing on all cylinders, and there are days like today when it won't cooperate at all.

It's always been thus for me. There's no obvious reason for it from day to day. Last week I had a couple of days of incredible productivity. Today I have a small but specific goal to write a three-minute piece for Medium, but I can't get it finished.

Yet, this is not procrastination, because I’ve been keen to do this particular task since yesterday morning. I’m not finding other things to do, and I’m not letting myself be distracted by more interesting things. I just can’t make my brain engage.

The day-to-day inconsistency of my brain has characterised my career and education too, whether it's having mental fog on the day of an exam, meeting a work deadline to a lower standard of quality I can't be effective on my allotted polishing day, or missing important details in a meeting despite being much sharper the day before.

This has got me thinking about whether there is a reason that I've simply not discovered. What am I doing differently? Sleep? Last night was fine. Food? I had a bit of chocolate last night, but other than that I was well-behaved all day, and I even drank plenty of fluid. Medications? Exactly the same for eight days running. Distractions? None at all today.

I might be able to find a way to shape my life to work around these days, but I'd rather not have to do that. I want to be able to elect that I will achieve a specific thing on a specific day, and not be thrown off course by an uncooperative brain.

The worst part is how days like this leave me feeling. My mood has plummeted since this morning, and absolutely everything is frustrating me.

I’ve been riffing off the concept of conquering writer’s block by lowering my standards, even though I don't believe what I've experienced this week is technically writer's block.

This morning I used my private stream-of-consciousness journal to write a post about a basic concept, and knocked out 550 words in 20 minutes. The piece will need a second draft, but the idea is now on paper. I could feel it taking shape as I typed.

This might be my initial approach to every post from now on: take a topic from my pile of topics, riff on it for as long there’s something to be said, note what’s valuable, write it again from those chunks. I've amassed dozens of topics against which I've written nothing at all, so I should definitely try this technique with as many of them as I need to. Perhaps that's how I'll come to understand which topics have sufficient merit to end up as published pieces: I assume I'll also come up with new topics as I write, or even find the topic shifting as I progress. That's all positive, and I do think it will complement the way I work.

Every day this week, I’ve sat down fully intending to write a piece with some degree of polish, and throw it up on the internet, either on Medium or my WordPress blog.

Monday was unsuccessful for reasons I didn’t understand, although I did make some progress with a couple of drafts. Tuesday was harder, and some volunteering I did that evening—which is usually no problem for me, and which I normally tear through with relish—was only achieved in fits and starts. Yesterday I woke up feeling properly ill, and gave myself the day off trying to push myself into action.

Today I feel better, but I still can’t get it together to write something for publication. I have a Trello board full of ideas which were electric when I came up with them, but today none of them have helped me get going.

All through this new direction—just 17 days!—I’ve understood that I need to rebuild my writing muscles by writing something, whether it’s here, somewhere professional or in my private nonsense journal. I’ve been taking private notes all week, but they’ve veered hard into the deeply introspective. I’ve not been able to formulate anything of interest to anyone else.

This has got me thinking about procrastination.

In the past I’ve definitely fallen foul of what can easily be described as procrastination: finding something easier to do; letting my attention wander to the nearest shiny object; doomscrolling. More commonly, as I’ve recently learnt from my ADHD diagnosis and treatment, I tend to search for dopamine hits, consciously or without any awareness at all.

This isn’t that, though.

I love writing, so it’s not something I resist. In the past I found it quite easy to smash together a piece to throw online, and even now I have no trouble bashing out 2,000 words of coherent nonsense in just over an hour.

To a degree this is related to confidence, but it’s no longer an issue with fear of others encroaching on my personal boundaries, which I’ve handily and permanently quashed; neither is it a reluctance to be authentic online, with my real name against my opinions.

It’s also related to the standards by which I’m hoping to hold myself, but only where Medium is concerned, because I see publishing there as a long term endeavour.

Ultimately I think it comes down to a combination of two things: a lack of practice in writing to a quality standard for extended periods, and fundamental issues with my brain failing to cooperate when I need it to. The latter is down to neurodivergence, and the former is something I’ll conquer by making writing a habit and a dedicated part of my daily life. I do feel there’s something in addition—depression, for example—but right now I can’t discern what that might be.

The fact that I’ve written this 500 word piece rather quickly shows that writing itself is not the problem, especially when the topic is front and centre in my mind. I'm sure things will loosen up as I push through whatever's going on with me. It's just fascinating, and a little bit deflating, to experience this glacier-like defrosting simultaneously with my enthusiam to write.

I used to write all the time. I’d sit and bang out a flippant but publishable blog post with very little forethought. Words and ideas would spill out of me.

At some point, life got in the way. I couldn’t pinpoint the month or even the year, but I stopped writing altogether—first recreationally, then professionally. I let serious goals get in the way of sensible goals, by which I mean professional growth goals took precedence over achievable goals. I let others’ projected expectations lead me away from my own comfortable expectations. This resulted in some great times, but also some traumatic experiences.

It’s now many years later and I’m rediscovering the joy of writing, for catharsis, achievement, art and pleasure. However, the closer I get to putting words in a public space, the louder the inner monologue becomes.

• ‘Have you lost your ability?’ I know I’m rusty, and every piece of advice I read and see says to just start, because ability comes with experience.
• ‘Will you embarrass yourself?’ The real question is: do I care? If I’m writing for myself, does it matter what people think? Should I be thrown off course by people I don’t know telling me how bad I am at something? Or do I throw up my personal boundaries and keep going? (I already know the answer.)
• ‘Are you as good as you think you are, or even as good as you think you once were?’ I would get excellent responses to my online writing, but that was from people I knew, or at least people I would talk to regularly. That’s never a gauge of objective quality. On the other hand, I enjoyed writing, and I think my pleasure came through in my writing. So, does it matter that I might never have been good at writing, if indeed that’s true?
• ‘Are you just wasting your time with this?’ Maybe, but how much of my life have I wasted on unachievable goals? How many years have I spent pursuing goals which made me unhappy and destroyed my confidence? Writing is a goal I’ve always had, and it’s something I’ve always enjoyed doing, so why shouldn’t I try it? What do I have to lose from giving it a red hot go, and what do I have to gain from taking it seriously?

I come away from these questions with an ever stronger drive to write, but that’s not to say my confidence remains intact. I suppose the only way to know whether I’m capable of sustained, long-term writing is to do it. It can’t be detrimental; in fact, it can only boost my skills.

This is where this particular blog comes in, then. It’s not professional writing that would appeal to an audience, neither is it private writing in an encrypted file that nobody will ever read. It’s public writing in a quiet space that a few people might see, and that I will not choose to defend.

After a few days of thought and two days of living hell with technical issues, I’ve created an additional blog.

• WordPress: For professional work which doesn’t quite belong on Medium. This includes in-depth articles about myself (i.e. in the first person, which isn’t really suitable for Medium), topics which might not do well on Medium, and polished posts I want to bash out without too much thought.

This will give me the freedom to just write without being too stressed about whether it belongs on Medium, whether it will harm my prospects, whether it will make a poor first impression, etc. In the long term I might look at expanding it or monetising it, depending on where all this goes, but for now it’s somewhere to put professional writing that I want to own, unlike what I write here on Blogger.

I’m toying with using I’ve decided to use Posthaven instead of Blogger for this blog too, also for the reason that I would own all my content, but I’ll hold off for now. If I keep making blogs and tinkering with formats, I won’t get any writing done.

(first posted to ooh-thats-mustard.blogspot.com)

Until I get to the point at which I’m being properly productive with blogging, this is the structure I’ve set up.

• Medium: For professional (or at least polished) work. I’m holding off a bit on this initially, because my writing muscle needs some work before I’m back at that level.
• Blogger Posthaven: For thoughts like this one. How I’m getting on with blogging.
• Personal journal: For personal notes on blogging that I wouldn’t make here. Also for outlining and shaping articles.
• Stream-of-consciousness journal: Simply for writing. The purpose of this one is to force myself to write anything at all to a target, such as 30 minutes or 1,000 words.

On days like today, when I can’t get going in any way that resembles quality or coherence, I’ll either whine about it in my personal journal or do a stream-of-consciousness sprint to lubricate the cogs of my brain. That way I have somewhere to be productive, whether it’s wasting time typing garbage or structuring thoughts into something publishable.

(first posted on ooh-thats-mustard.blogspot.com)

I'm jumping back into writing, but this time I want it to be permanent.

I've set up a Medium account and will start writing on that, at least initially. The appeal of Medium is that I can write about anything I want—it doesn't have to be a one-topic blog, and I don't need multiple blogs to cover my interests. There's also a community of people who might actually see what I write. That's it.

This blog is for me to thrash out my thoughts about this whole process: the reason I'm writing, my thoughts about writing, discussion of my struggles and mental blocks, exasperated outbursts. That sort of thing.

The goal of writing is long term, but what I expect to achieve is short term. Right now I don't want to think past this. Every web search on blogging in 2022 returns links galore about monetisation and career blogging and referrals and 'building your business'. No. I just want to enjoy writing again. If this works for me personally—if it makes me happy, if it's deeply satisfying, if it builds skills I know I can sustain and get lost in—then, and only then, will I think further than writing stuff on the internet.

If I do anything with this specific blog, it'll be to tidy up the layout and perhaps buy a cheap domain name. I just want to focus on writing.

(first posted on ooh-thats-mustard.blogspot.com)