Writing Fails of 2015

If you have read my old blog posts, you would agree with me that I have over romanticised “writing”. If you are close to me (physically), you must have had an unfair dose of this obsession. This is because of the level of importance I place on writing. Writing was the core of my 2015 goals.

Ironically, the central theme of 2015 suffered a year long malaise, which I wouldn’t completely attribute to external forces, but myself.

30 Day Challenge

I started out with a 30 day of daily writing challenge. I started a BBM group and invited friends to join in the challenge. The outcome of the challenge was OK, but something happened to me. It made my writing worse.

How?

I relied on old drafts and the belief that I would be able to come up with 30 things to write about ahead of time. I discovered that I had lost interest in the drafts, old and preemptive. This loss of interest lingered till the end of 2015

Proliferation

In addition to my blog, I ran a football blog called FootyLogue, and was on the road to start a content site for Millennials. The latest project sucked me dry, as I did a very deep research for content, and had even started drafting content before launch. Being obligated to post to the football blog also divided my focus. I should have kept things simple.

Tool-mania

One thing I still struggle with is setting up the perfect workflow that starts from the simplest idea for a post to publishing. In the bid to get this flow, I have tried lots of apps for capture and continuity. Having drafts on WordPress doesn’t work for me. I feel too much stress on my eyes when I see a long list of drafts. I moved to Evernote and experienced the same clutter shock. Simplenote. Then I berthed on Google Docs.

Google Docs allowed me to edit online and offline. I only discovered that I could not download Google Docs on my Kindle. Another rut.

I may just return to the analogue way.

Comparison Trap

In trying to make a mark in the blogosphere, I read more articles in addition to the hundreds I had read before on blogging, etc. This messed things up. As a result, I flipped the look of this blog a dozen times. I got lost in looking for a niche to adopt and write about. The niche epiphany never came.

Target Consciousness

Keeping count of the number of words I wrote sounded like a good idea. I believed it would motivate me to push myself. Instead, I became perfectionist, I only wanted to write 500 words and above. Of course, this backfired.

It’s 2016, and I do not want to blog about writing, in this light anymore. It should be about successes, traction and shareable lessons.

The best thing would be to flow, and use this blog as a brain dump, not a platform for climbing the social ladder or achieving world domination or compete with BuzzFeed for traffic.

Tags: 2015, Blogging, Distractions, Focus, reflections, Writing

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