Writer • Homeschooler • Nice Atheist • Cat Person
Recently I have found immense difficulty with starting new projects. I think about writing all the time, but I cannot seem to actually motivate myself to work past the vague vision of a story and put down coherent thoughts. I am stuck, and I need something to help me work past this block.
We’ve all heard stories of writers, even very famous prolific writers, who wrote multiple books prior to their first publishing contract. It’s a pretty common trope in the writing world that everyone has a novel stuck in a desk drawer somewhere. All writers at one point convinced themselves they were going to write the Great American Novel. Most gave up because it wasn’t perfect. Or because they could not get over the traditional publishing hurdles.
Most of us have been conditioned to understand value only in terms of monetary worth. How many books have you sold? How much ad revenue does your website bring in? What is the going rate for your skills?
Overall our approach to homeschooling remains relatively relaxed. We try to avoid arbitrary rules like you must know this by a certain age or grade, and we do not do much formal testing. Instead we prefer to look at the overall picture: What is interesting about this subject? What is important to know about this particular area? How will learning this be useful?
When you are feeling overwhelmed by everything you want to write about, slow down, and focus on the tiny part you can see through a one-inch picture frame.
Sometimes you just have to pause, re-evaluate, and switch gears. I have decided to change the focus of this writing space. Going forward I plan to share more frequent, shorter posts about my writing process.