Alright so now I’m approaching the halfway point of what I’m trying to do, and you may have figured it out already. If not, you’ll see. Or you won’t see. I am yet to work it all out.

What was the last thing I talked about? It was the rain. What is the next thing that I can talk about? Not the rain. Well, I could talk about the rain again but that would serve no purpose. That would be pointless, as they say. But maybe I do want to talk about the rain… but not yet.

When I think about doing what I’m doing now, I think about all the issues that I’m causing. This is a lot to read and talk on and all of that, but I told myself that I would do this and doing it is what I am doing. I can only hope for the best at this point, but I don’t know what the best is. Maybe this isn’t a good idea. Maybe I should do the next few bits of writing as fiction instead of anything else. One bit of silly story writing is only one bit. I could use a few more. You could use a few more, too. However, this bit of writing is not going to be that as this bit of writing needs to be serious writing. It is the only way ahead, and a head is what I have and so I will make sure my head stays on my neck. If I lose it, then who is truly to blame? Certainly not me, and certainly not the horseless headman.

So anyway, I’m thinking about writing. Again. Surprising I know. I’m thinking about how we write. Why am I even saying this? It is evident.

But really, what drives people to write in a manner similar to the way I write? I’m sure some people do not set out and do things like this, which are incredibly silly and possibly damaging in some way. Stephen King, from what I remember, writes something like five thousand words a day. That is something to admire, I think, but not necessarily something to aspire to. A lot of people approach writing in different ways and whatever works for them works for them. However, I do think it is good to try and write as much as you can at times, even if it is complete nonsense.

The path of improvement requires a lot of work a lot of the time, and I think people don’t realise this. Or maybe they do, but they don;t know where to start. I think the best way to start is by putting pen to paper, or whichever equivalent works best for you. And I think that, at least in my case, the best way to write is to start writing.

A lot of time can be spent just trying to figure out what to write. I don’t think there is a right starting word in a lot of instances. I think that, more often than not, the right sentences come in retrospect, or they just flow out then and there. Of course there are different processes to writing, however, but if someone is having difficulty starting, I tell them to just start writing and get it out of the way and then go from there.

Write whatever. Write what comes naturally. Write what comes to mind first. There are more important things than trying to write something the right way the first time around. It eats up a lot of time trying to do that, and so if you’re at least getting something down, you’re building a better habit of getting started. The more you do that, the easier it can be to write, and perhaps the sooner you get to writing what it is that you wanted to write. That is something to consider, I think, and I also think that it’s worth putting into practice where possible.

Editing is part of the writing process, and I think it’s something that needs to be thought about, too. Editing helps make things better, and it’s often good to have a good editor to work on your work. Someone will be willing to challenge things if they need to be challenged, and who can recommend improvements that help strengthen your work whilst preserving your voice. In some ways I’m lucky (and plenty of others are, too) in being my own editor as I’m quite happy to dig into my own stuff and see if it stands. However, I do think that I’m blind to some of my mistakes, and this is something I always try to work on, but I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get the whole way there. Still, it’s good to try and keep learning.

Writing is a wonderful process, and a hard process, and an easy process. It’s an art and should be respected as such. It’s incredibly versatile, and it’s always good to try and write more where you can. There is so much missed when the written word is not respected or appreciated, and the more you work on it and learn, the more you can better understand what is desired and expressed, and how words are being used and all of those things. It has a long history, and it’s everywhere, really.

I worry about people using content generators to write as they’re cutting themselves out from a skill they can develop. There are some circumstances where using a content generator may provide some benefit, but most of the time it’s better to keep plugging away where you can. To keep writing.

If you have the ability to learn how to write, then you should do what you can, I think. And read, too. You think more about how words are used, and you start using them more effectively, too. It goes a long way, and that work pays off quite a lot, in the end.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 12:29:23

This post, and the next two, were meant to go up yesterday. I ran out of time as I was meant to be heading off for food and didn’t want to be late, and so I stopped the uploading. Probably a good thing, too.

This is… okay. I think it was pretty clear that I was running out of steam by the time I wrote this. I should have stopped, but I persisted. Oh well. At least something came out of it.

Written at work.