You have been trying to write something every day for a week now, but it’s harder than you remember. In the past, it seemed, you could think of a topic and then write over a thousand words within a hour. Then, after spending about 20 minutes editing and thinking about the layout, the entire post would be done, start to finish, in less than two hours. Now, it’s hard to think of the words to fill a paragraph without stopping… and then coming back to find the end of a single sentence.

Thinking about ways to fill a new post, to have some words written for the day, you pull up your saved favorites and look for something to write about that has some connection to a video game. You read through the latest controversy and the news of the day. You skim through the dozen or so new posts on the sites you follow and flip back to the blog post you have been trying to write. You don’t even have a title yet.

Going back to the websites, you look for some style to copy. If you can’t be creative on your own, you might as well follow the models of other writers. After all, they must have been at the same moment you are at one time or another. By copying them, you at least stand a chance of getting your writing done for the day. It might not be good, or even worth reading, but you will manage to write something. That’s how you will justify the time spent on this project anyway.

You catch yourself looking at one of the frequent numbered lists that inevitably seem to appear every few days. You have never tried that format before, and it doesn’t look too hard. It’s just a matter of making up your points, numbering them, and then add a few sentences under each point, it seems. You begin by writing your first point.

1) It’s fun!

Looking at it, you realize it’s a pretty lame first point. Calling a video game fun is  basically meaningless. You have seen other writers do it, and swore you never would. Yet, here you are using it as your first point. However, because you can’t think of anything else, you move on to the next point, hoping this process will get easier as you go through it.

2) It has multiplayer!

This one is even worse. You have never been good at playing with others, let alone playing online with others. You didn’t like this part of the video game. In fact, you avoided it completely. It hurt you at the end of the video game though. Without the extra points from playing the multiplayer part, you didn’t get the best ending. You realize you have your next point.

3) Multiple endings! 

You are undecided about this. While it’s good that the decisions matter, at least somewhat, in the video game, you thought the choices were basically meaningless. You remember from reading other writer’s posts about the video game that there are only three ending. You saw one of them yourself and, after watching the other two from videos posted online, you didn’t see much of a difference between them all. The game still ended with everyone you cared about in the video game dying. You didn’t care what happened after that moment.

You sit staring at the screen. To reach double-digits, you still need several more points, however, you’ve now spent more time thinking about writing than you wanted to spend on the whole task itself. Plus, it’s been over an hour and you only have three points. This is much harder than you first thought it would be.

Several more minutes pass as you drum your fingers on your desk. You consider giving up on this post, maybe trying to write something creative tomorrow. Of course, then you will lose your momentum of daily writing. If you give up now, you might not start back again for weeks or even months. It has happened before, you remember.

After saving the draft, you pull up a preview of it, hoping it looks like more text on the screen than what you really wrote. It doesn’t. It looks like much less. The few paragraphs you wrote as an introduction look short and boring. Your three points are some of the worst writing you have ever composed.

Having finally come to the conclusion that you may never understand how some writers manage to write hundreds of words per day, you save the draft one more time and close the tab. You make a note to try again tomorrow. By then, you will definitely have something interesting to write about a video game. It may even be considered unique and get you in one of those lists of good writing for the week.

Shaking your head, you rid yourself of that ambition, at least for the moment, and go back to reading what other people have written.