Mixing Mediums 🕸 - Issue #3
Sometimes, when I'm stuck, it's not my mind that's the problem; it's my medium.Â
There was an essay I needed to write. So, at the end of August, I decided to start writing it. I sat at my desk, Word open, ready to write. After a handful of stiff-toned words, I couldn't write anymore.
If "writer's block" is a lack of ideas, that is definitely not what I was suffering from. What I was writing was descriptive, not even a creative piece, and I already knew exactly what the content of the essay ought to say. That should have made it a breeze. But my fingers had frozen on the keyboard. The words just weren't coming out.
For close to two weeks after the first attempt, I tried, on most days, to get behind my keyboard and write this essay. It wasn't working. The words absolutely refused to flow… until I got a bright idea, and switched mediums.
I picked up a pen and began to hand-write instead of type. Suddenly, the words were flowing! Until, all at once, they weren't again. And they refused to do so until I switched back to keyboard.
🕸
In the past, I thought I had cracked the code of which mediums were most efficient for me: pen and paper for vomit drafts, followed by transcription to computer, and then doing all subsequent editing on PC. It still works, a lot of the time. But lately, my brain has thrived more from a lack of formula than anything else.
For a single draft, these days, I'll probably have written part of it directly on PC, part with a pen and paper, part with a stylus and tablet, and part with a mobile app on my phone. And I am capable of alternating between all of these in a single hour! It doesn't matter what I'm writing, whether fiction or creative nonfiction, poetry, application materials, final exam assignments… If it's write-able, I'm probably going to compose it in 5 different mediums before I'm done with it.
The lesson I'm trying to internalize better is to listen to my creative needs in the moment, allowing myself to lean into them whenever possible. Recent times have shown me that trying to stick to formulae just for formulae's sake does more harm than good for my creative process.
That's all from me for now!
Until the next issue,
The Spider Kid. 🕸