I love writing for the Odyssey. It is one of the things I am most proud of. I put out content that I am proud of every week and I put a lot of hard work into my articles and my community. I support other creators, I ask for their feedback, and I appreciate the time it takes to create a community full of solid, quality content.
But I'm going to be real honest with you for a sec. Sometimes writing articles and coming up with ideas sucks. Sometimes, I just have no ideas, I have no motivation, and I hate everything I try to put into words.
This week was one of those weeks. I hated every article I tried to write and I went through at least 7 ideas before I threw in the towel and stared at a blank screen hopelessly waiting (and secretly praying) for a topic to just pop out of nowhere, push me out of the way, and write itself.
Spoiler alert: that didn't happen. If it did, I would have really questioned the amount of sleep I need to be getting. So, anyway, I thought why not just write an article and vent about the struggles of creating quality content? People rant and vent all of the time. There's no reason I can't do it in an article.
And that, my friends, is exactly what this is.
I spent several days writing drafts of different things. "Guy BFF" articles, "21 Goals Before Turning 21", "Why I Hate Math", "20 Reasons Cole Sprouse Is My Future Husband", and the list goes on and on. But I hated every single one I wrote. Not to mention that some of those articles were kind of ridiculous, to begin with.
I even completed some of them and got right up to turn them in when I decided they were garbage and started all over again.
I'm going to hit you with a little bit of truth once again; sometimes writing for the Odyssey is really hard. I focus too hard on what people want to see and then I lose sight of what I really wanted to write about in the first place.
Sometimes I take polls and votes and then write what my audience wants to read and then my article flops anyway because all of the people that voted, never really cared in the first place.
Sometimes I get so pumped about an idea that I'll write 4 articles in a day. And sometimes I hate the thought of having to write another article and I push it off until the very last second. Creating content that people will actually want to take the time to read is hard.
But when I sit back and look over everything I have done, the articles that do the best are usually the ones that I am the proudest of. They are articles that have the chance to educate people or maybe make a difference in a life or two. They're the articles that people text me and thank me for writing.
Those are the articles that seem to make all of the weeks of writer's block and sub-par articles worth it. Even if I did debate throwing my keyboard at the ground and submitting the gibberish that comes out of it.
