Overcoming Writer's Block

Writing is like creating a body of art. Every stroke of colour from the artist's palette builds up into something worthy of attention. As a kid, I had this little diary, where I wrote down all my daily activities and my thoughts. I've loved documentation since I was a boy, it was either I was writing down my To-do list of activities for the day or the week, or it was me scribbling down my thoughts inside my little diary. The only way I could express my feelings was to put them into words. A few weeks into learning web development, the excitement of coding and visualizing the result on a web browser made me happy. I felt I needed to document the steps I made to achieve those awesome results. My curiosity on how I could document my learning process led me to what we generally call "Technical Writing". Now, this was so different from the regular documentation I did as a kid. I regard it as the game that "separates boys from men". After a few articles, about my journey, a day came when I suddenly had this loss of drive to write, whenever I opened the "Medium" app to draft something new, the ideas weren't flowing as they used to. I never could explain to anyone how I felt or what was going on because I couldn't even try to explain it. Now fast track to the awesome session Ruth Ikegah delivered on the Hashnode Bootcamp, her session was like that divine intervention I needed. I finally found a meaning to my problem. I figured I wasn't the only one who experiences the block. There's even a Generally name for the way I felt. "Ah Writer's Block"! I exclaimed during the session with a quirked smile on my face.

Writer's Block??

According to Ruth's definition "Writer's Block" is a condition primarily associated with writing, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown. She broke down the topic into bits and also highlighted the causes of writer's block. The session couldn't have ended without her giving us tips on how to overcome writer's block. I was asked to "write an article about what motivates me to write or blog as a developer".

MY MOTIVATION

As a Developer who wanted to blog and document my whole journey with an audience, I had to "Understand the Why". Why do I want to blog? What drives me to keep blogging? Is blogging the right path for me? I took out time to answer all these questions before I opened an Account with Medium(then I didn't get enough information about other blogging platforms like hashnode, dev.to etc.) These were the answers to all the questions I asked myself and I can explicitly say they are also what motivates me to keep on Blogging.

1. Passion to teach and impact knowledge to someone who's stuck on a particular topic or interest. Whenever I couldn't understand a particular concept in coding, Google and its contents were my best friends. A lot of developers take out time to carefully explain most of these concepts and they were helpful. That motivated me to also write about concepts I just learnt so someone out there who's stuck just like I was, could find my contents helpful and satisfying.

2. Connect with other developers and writers.

3. Drive to keep learning and on express what I felt with words.

Conclusion

Just as Ruth Ikegah said in her session "she usually writes down all the good comments she gets from her post" and whenever she's facing writer's block, she would go back to those nice comments she got and that creativity comes back.

This article will be the same for me. It will be a source of motivation that will help me overcome writer's block whenever it strikes again.

I'm certain with time, my motivation will be a longer list than this because growth is never constant.

Do you want to connect with me more? You could follow me on Twitter @Jhimmyofficial. Please do leave a comment or a reaction if you find this article helpful and great 😁