There you are, sitting at your laptop with a new document open. You’re ready to write and inspiration is just flowing through you. There are so many ideas, but which would be the best for this assignment? You put your headphones on and turn up your music. You start typing, slowly at first.
You tune into the music, sometimes it gives you ideas, and feel the beat coursing through your body. You type along to the beat, but you aren’t paying attention to what exactly is being typed. It could just be the lyrics to the song playing, for all you know. For some reason, though, you’re confident it isn’t the song. You open your eyes; you weren’t even aware you closed them. Looking over the mess of words sprawled over the screen, you scowl. That wasn’t what you expected and it could definitely be better.
You open another new document, keeping the first open still, just in case you want to get back to it. You pause the music and mute the television. Perhaps this will help you. You close your eyes again, this time aware of the action. You hear the wind outside blowing loudly and open your eyes back up. At this point, you aren’t sure if you’re ever going to get this paper done. You type a few words then take a drink from the glass of water next to you. Now you read over the sentence you typed and feel content. You decide to continue with that train of thought, hopeful this will be it.
Thirty minutes later, you put your laptop to the side, standing up and stretching. You’ll read what you wrote after a break. You walk to the kitchen and grab a snack; you’ve been dying for something sweet. You talk with your family for a few minutes before returning to your perch next to the laptop you discarded earlier. You pull it back onto your lap. You sip the soda you snagged from the fridge, you were tired of water, and start reading. It could be better. You reread everything two more times, once quietly to yourself. You tweak the more obvious mistakes and read through it again.
You put your headphones back on and sip your soda again. You decide to try one more idea. You open yet another new document and start the process again. You spend less time on this one and can feel yourself just wanting to quit. You hate yourself for having to write another essay. It wears you down but you can’t help it. It’s become something you must do. No matter what it is- be it a chapter for a story you write out of boredom, a school assignment, or even a poem- you have to write at least two of your ideas out and be content with them all.
This all causes you so much stress. All this writing, rewriting, reading, rereading, and belittling yourself really takes its toll. You’ve tried to stop this process before, but it’s useless. You don’t feel content with yourself or your writing if you haven’t gone through your mental writing checklist. Finally, you save the writing you spent the most time on and put it away for the night.