Radical! Awesome! Mega!

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.

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.