How the Pandemic Taught Us to Be Grateful + Notes

Jan 19, 2022
4 min read

Updated: Jan 20, 2022

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So I have had a creative block for quite some time now. I don't know whether it's actually depression or just writer's block, but I haven't been able to do anything at all. If I shower, I will consider it a very productive day. Yeah, it's that bad.

Anyway, I wrote an essay/article for The Teen Magazine. Though what I have written is very far from the truth (probably why the article sounds so weird) I still felt obligated to continue it. I took a hard topic to challenge myself so that I can force myself to see things in a better light. The process of writing that article just made me more nihilistic if I am going to be honest.

I don't think I can expect much from my first article, I am new after all. I tried my best. Additionally, that had to be the hardest thing I have ever written in my life. I think it's the topic. I don't do well with topics that require me to answer with my soul. I could just project my problems into fiction, why do I have to be honest about anything at all?

I know every writer hates their own work, but I think I take my hatred to another level. Probably.

Anyway, this whole thing has taught me a lot of things about "the writing process" and I guess I should write what exactly I have learnt.

Notes:

I generally need to grab one of those cheap drawing blocks and draw a mindmap.

Now, I need to keep in mind what categories I have to include in my mindmap.

The title or prompt will be at the centre.

Then the subheadings are usually like so:

Ideas/themes to explore
Article writing tips
Journalism ethics
Guidelines set by the organisation
How to set the mood to write
One-liners
Technical details
Signature writing style
Calculations
Corrections

A rough guide goes a little like this:

Ideas/themes to explore- If you have some idea on what you want to write, then make some categories on what you want to talk about. For example, you have to elaborate on three main ideas, write those main ideas and go on from there. If you have no idea what to write about, write the first thing that comes to mind and just explore further from there. Usually, that ends up like a spider map, but that's okay, and if anything, even better.

Article writing tips- I follow some general guidelines made by the advice I have received from people. For articles, in particular, you need a clear intro, body paragraphs, headers, etc. Make those into checkboxes so you fulfil every requirement.

Journalism ethics-They are things to keep in mind while writing something. You have to remain truthful and objective, be impartial and fair, hold public accountability, be accurate with information and not cherry-pick information. For me, being objective is difficult, so I need reminders from time to time. I would suggest making this a checklist and seeing if your essay/article fits all these guidelines. If they do not, then edit it.

Guidelines set by the organisation- If applicable and subjective to the user.

How to set the mood to write- Personally, I love writing on google docs and Wix. It just makes me feel professional. That is probably because I use MS Word all the time for random things. This is also subjective to users of course.

One-liners- Any beautiful sentences I come up with just end up there. You don't have to use all of them of course, it's just a word bank of some sort. It would be helpful to include a note on what classifies as relevant or not at the top of the section.

Technical details- This includes things like tense, pov, and what kind of thing you are writing. If you are writing about something in the past, then you write "past tense" under technical details.

Signature writing style- Subjective to the user. You see if there's anything you're going for. My motto is "Humor, not sarcasm."

Calculations- This is for reaching the word count and planning on paragraphs. Usually, I tend to decide which paragraphs will be longest and shortest here, so that it is readable. Or there are many other aspects to think about really.

Corrections- If there are any edits or corrections, you just write them down here. You will edit it later. I suggest using Grammarly and the Hemingway editor for editing. You don't have to follow everything to the dot, they are just suggestions. Grammarly is for grammar and Hemingway is for readability (how easy to read it is). I would also recommend reading out loud to see if there are any repetitive ideas or sounds. As someone who reads aloud in their head, how a sentence sounds is important to me. I suggest a thesaurus, of course, to change repetitive phrases and words.

Extra:

These are things I found out but didn't get to apply or it just isn't applicable to me, but I have decided to add them for future reference.

I got this from @thewritersgarden by the way.

Things that will improve your writing:

Reading
Studying psychology, history, science and philosophy
Keeping up with the news
Talking to people/experiencing life
Writing
Critiquing others and getting critiqued
Writing advice posts/books/lectures

Random

Writing in comic sans makes it easier to write (very excited to try this one)
Using Grammarly (the free account is still very satisfactory)
Annotate books
Read non-fiction (counter-intuitive, but helpful)

Conclusion

I hope that helps someone. I should note, by the way, that this is probably not applicable to writing fiction, but maybe the process is similar? I am not too familiar with writing fiction, so I have no comments on that. As always, thanks for reading.

-Lemon Farmer

(Tragic Lemons)

@tragiclemons.inc on Instagram

I know that now my identity is hella easy to figure out now, but like, what could go wrong?

Besides, I don't think anyone other than me will read the stuff I post here.

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