Recently, I’ve been having trouble getting words onto the page. Words don’t seem to come to me as easily as they used to, and I find myself coming up with blanks when I try to figure out where the story should go next. And I also have trouble committing to any story ideas. I’ve got a bunch of half-baked ideas, and it seems that I only make 100-200 words of progress on them before writing them off (ha!) as lost causes and trying to pivot to the next, new, shiny, idea.

Even with this blog post, I wasn’t really sure what topic to write about. But maybe it’s because I’m out of practice. I haven’t written much for the past…two to three months, or so? I’ve been making puzzles for the past three months instead of honing my writing craft.

And, let’s be completely honest….I’ve also been binge-watching Avatar the Last Airbender, looking at adoptable cats on local shelter websites, and reading AskReddit. If I’d put even a fraction of that time towards writing, I would probably have at least one or two finished short stories.

But also, maybe I burned out a little bit while working on puzzles so ferociously. I’m not sure. I really struggle with how to tell if I’m being kind to myself, or if I’m just letting myself be lazy. It’s a fine line to walk, and it’s hard to ignore the the perfectionist overachiever in myself.

At the same time, even if I am just being kind to myself and allowing myself to recover from burnout, the less I write, the harder it is to try to get back into it.

So today I sat my butt in the chair and decided to write something. I thought I’d start small, and jot down some of my musings and ramblings in this post. This comes at a very good time - I hadn’t realized that I didn’t make a post for May yet, and the month is nearly over!

I’ve also been using AI a lot more often at work, to help me with coding, organizing ideas, and developing slide decks. While I think it has made me faster at doing certain tasks, a little part of me wants to blame my atrophied writing skills on it. It’s so easy to succumb to cognitive surrender.

But regardless of the reason, there’s only one real way for me to get better at writing: practice. And what better time to start than now? My blank word doc beckons; it’s time to face my fear of the empty page and start tapping away at the keyboard.

And it’s always a good time to remind myself this: it’s okay if it’s bad. It’s okay if it’s not original. It’s okay if the characters are clunky, if the dialogue is forced, if the worldbuilding doesn’t make sense. And it’s okay if nobody else ever reads it.

It’s about the process, and about the effort that goes into it. And that will be enough.