Stumped.

I joined Vocal to strengthen my writing and find myself at the same place as I am every time I open my laptop to write- stumped.

Yet if I were to go grab a pen and notebook, the thoughts would flow onto paper.

I've gone over this above scenario several times in my head and the thing that continues to show itself is this: when I am typing on my laptop it is easy for me to go into editing mode and bypass writing mode.

When I'm writing with a good ballpoint pen and paper, I WRITE. Editing mode is non-existent.

I love the way a smooth pen feels across notebook paper. My right hand easily holds the pen without gripping and my handwriting is a nice combination of mom and dads. And I can write like this for hours without a break. When I'm done writing on paper, I feel fulfilled and that I accomplished something really awesome.

On my laptop? I'm in critique mode the entire time and feel like everything I write sucks bad bananas.

And I know the only way to move forward with something uncomfortable is to move through the uncomfortableness one step at a time. It doesn't have to be perfect. I don't have to be the perfect author or writer. I just need to write because writing frees up space in my brain.

Now what I'm doing is looking at the word count to see how many words are left before the minimum count of 600. And I'm overthinking way too much.

The thoughts that come up are things like: who in the world would want to read anything you have to say? what makes your insights and thoughts so damn special anyway? I struggle with those thoughts now as I sit here in front of a screen that now says 308 word count. Parts of me want to cancel my Vocal subscription and other parts urge me onward, whispering in the back of my mind, 'keep going'.

I wrote a book earlier this year and sent it into an editor. The process of writing was easy for me even though I was on my laptop; no editing mode, only writing mode for five months. I didn't know what to expect from my editor and when he returned my book with his edits, overwhelm immediately took over. At first I read through my book taking in his suggestions and agreeing with most of them. Seeing my book through his eyes made me aware of the flaws to the thousandth degree and I began the task of editing.

As I began editing, I began to doubt the entire book and myself. I would edit a chapter, re-read it, and edit the entire chapter AGAIN until the book no longer resembled the first book I had written. I'd deleted several chapters because I felt like they didn't belong anymore. I kept emailing my editor to grant me longer extensions because the passion I had when I initially wrote the book was gone. My word document stayed closed for months with me not even wanting to look at the book until a couple of weeks ago when I sent Joel and email asking to close the collaboration on the book.

Having to no longer edit my book is awesome. I understand it's work, and crave the editing process going smooth. Maybe this simplicity in editing comes from writing a different style of book or maybe it has nothing to do with that and I'm over here dreaming of something that doesn't exist. The word count is now 600 and I feel pretty good. I sat down and wrote.