WRITING

Is This Easy Maneuver Considered a “Writer’s Cheat”?

Medium’ers, you be the judge.

Photo by Deon Black on Unsplash

To be clear, ideas are not the problem.

Oh, I have plenty of them. However, what troubles me is getting started with them, or is it? My notes and article ideas seem too big to accomplish even though they are based on personal experience. They hold so many pathways that it gives me a little scare. Know what I mean?

Funnily enough, my first article on Medium was on overcoming the beginner’s dilemma. Give it a read here:

Hello World, Do You Sabotage Your Potential To Excel at Something New?

As I mention in there,

Treat your ideas like your most precious asset.

But what about making a choice?

There is this thing about choosing what to write. Let’s not kid ourselves:

Some articles are more complex than others.
Some require higher emotional involvement than others.
Some feel better on one day than on the other.
…

This list goes on and on.

While browsing Medium, this statement in RGomez’s introduction on About Me Stories caught my attention:

Play. Play anything. Play daily.

Hence, it’s time to simplify things and get some help.

A quick search on DuckDuckGo led me to writingexercises.co.uk.

I try to avoid the big search engine giant we all know whenever possible and use privacy-protecting alternatives. That is why I use DuckDuckGo and Ecosia. Which engine(s) do you use for online research?

Writingexercises.co.uk offers a couple of different generators. Here are my favorites and the first results they spit out for me:

1. Random subject to write about (Write about your relationship with food.)
2. First line of dialogue (“You stand there and accuse me, but where were you at the time?”)
3. Random Scenario (You’re a ghost looking for a new home in your neighborhood. Where would you choose?)

How can more ideas solve the problem?

Well, just like when we have an emotional block, an outsider’s perspective can do the trick. Writing about one topic that is not self-generated feels easier and frees up my mind for other articles. In the end, practice makes better.

So, which one of the topics would you go for? Follow me to read the outcome.

Note to self: need to find a generator that I can feed with my notes and that makes a choice for me. 

From now onward, I will mix my topics with random ones from generators. Balance in life is something I am seeking in so many ways. Rest assured that there will be more writing on this topic.

Do you feel that this is cheating? Let me know in the comments, and if you dare, DO TELL me all about your maneuvers and tricks to get going with an article.

Let me know what you’d like to read about from me.
Yours, Alyssa-Ninja Weis

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