How my best post on Medium kept me from writing
And how did I finally overcome
About four days ago I published my first post in a publication. (the link to it is at the end of this post)
It is my most viewed and most liked post by far and is still doing well.
I did get a feeling that I am writing something amazing while I was halfway writing it on that Friday evening.
Also, it was the post I spent the most time preparing to write.
I have published a book review after that but the idea was in my mind for almost a couple of weeks, so not counting it as a new post.
I did not post anything after that.
I had ideas of what to write about, I noted those in my diary to write sometime in the future.
Or there were times when I tried to think what to write about but could not think of anything.
Yesterday I was on medium checking out my new followers, claps, and responses on my previous posts and stumbled upon two to three profiles who mentioned they are committed to writing daily and were writing one post daily.
It made me realize that I have not written anything for four days now.
I could not think of anything that was preventing me from writing.
I was getting time to write my journal.
I did not get any urgent assignment at work.
Those were just four regular days with nothing to blame for not letting me write on Medium.
On digging deeper, I realized it is my last post that is keeping me from writing anything new.
Any idea I could think of was not as relatable.
Any title I could think of was not as attractive.
I got busy trying to read books to improve my writing style.
I got busy trying to improve my illustration skills. (I use mindmaps or hand-drawn images in most of my posts when trying to explain something)
Without noticing it, I was waiting until I get an idea that was at least as good as my last post to seriously consider writing it.
But…
The reason I started writing on Medium was to practice and improve my writing skills.
If I waited to get a really good idea before starting to write I would have never started writing.
I would never know for sure if an idea is good enough or not unless I start writing and publish it.
The last post was relatively better but not perfect.
I did not want my last post to be the best post I ever wrote.
The more I waited to get better ideas the less frequently I started getting any idea at all.
So I started with this post, writing what I was feeling strongly about.
Link to the last post as promised:
The book review mentioned:
