I was watching a video on making linocut prints the other day, and the cheeky fellow presenting was talking about analysis paralysis and then he grinned and said something like ‘I abbreviate it as Anal. P.’ which also flashed in text on the screen. It made me laugh. It made me pay attention (I’m often streaming videos in the background as random noise while I’m working on something else) so he achieved his goal.

That moment came back to me while I was struggling to come up with what to write about here today. The problem is not a lack of ideas. The problem is too many. Some of them require far more time, energy, and research than I can manage (even if I were so inclined) at this time. Others feel like cheating because I’ve talked about them before here.

So. I’m paralyzed.

Which leads me to back off and take another tack at it. Who am I writing this for? Nominally, you, my Dear Reader. I have a rough idea of who you are: a writer or an author (what’s the difference? Well, one has finished something with the intent of publishing, the other may or may not have finished anything and likely doesn’t plan to publish) who is Indie-oriented. There are not a lot of you relatively speaking for whatever reason. We try to put good stuff up here at MGC but the audience is small and dwindling.

So, who am I really writing this for? Me. Same as with my fiction, really. Yes, I try to understand my market and accommodate their expectations (doesn’t always work, see my latest two-star review where the reader was disappointed in a cosy romance that didn’t pay off for them. No idea what they thought was going to happen aside from the main characters getting together, but I let that person down badly) but mostly I write what I want to write. Why?

If I didn’t write what made me happy, I’d stop doing this. Bluntly, it doesn’t make sense to continue beating your head against the wall (and yes, I know that when you stop it feels better but you see, I’m not stopping!) unless you are getting something out of it. In the indie world, that wall is discoverability, algorithms, and shrinking attention spans. Writing for yourself first keeps the flame alive long enough for the business side to matter. With my fiction that gets published I get money which pays bills and buys me more books, to be reductive. With the non-fiction what am I getting?

I get a chance to take a look at what’s inside my head.

You read that right. If I put what’s a mess in there — inchoate, tangled, un-examined — onto the page where I have to sort it out and make sense of it? Then I know better what I’m thinking, and why, and if it doesn’t make sense I can attempt to figure out what I need to correct in my assumptions. I’m making myself a little bit better every time I write an essay where I’m truly thinking and not just dialing it in.

What can you, Dear Reader, take away from this exercise?

First of all, when you are paralyzed about what to write, stop worrying about who you might be writing for, and just write. Give yourself permission to be bad, however you define ‘bad’ and write something down. Write for you and you alone.

Secondly, writing non-fiction can help with the fiction writing by helping you examine your underlying thought processes. Writing about why you are structuring a story like that, what is going on with your world (also, world-building essays do not belong in the story, I said what I said! Come at me…) and what’s motivating your characters from an external-to-the-story point can help you figure out what you’re doing wrong with the story and help you kickstart the storytelling.

Finally, the act of writing engenders more writing. Doesn’t matter the ‘flavor.’ By writing something down, you’ve started a cascade in your brain you can then channel into the directions you deem useful. Along the way, you may find that you have something which can be used for other things. Like posting on the blog.