I Took A Gap Year 6 Years Ago To Become A Writer. Here Are 5 Mistakes I Made.

Leap of Faith: Part 3 of 4

May 30, 2022

Information Overload = Proof of Incompetency = No Action

At least thrice a month (yes, I have counted), my mother would say to me, “You are so lucky to have all the information at your fingertips. If we had the internet back in our days, our lives would have been so different.”

I agree with my mother that internet access is a life-changer. I am setting up my professional life here from the comfort of my home.

But I have learnt in the past six years that there’s a caveat to the internet.

I started to make good use of my gap year by diving into blogs, articles and videos about the craft of novel writing. That was my first mission of the gap year — learn about the craft as much as possible. The simple reason was I needed to know where to start my writing journey.

After spending months processing all the information, I could find on writing and making notes, here’s what I learned — I knew nothing about writing.

I started off with great confidence to learn about writing, but with each passing day, I realised there’s so much to learn about writing.

Plot points, character sketches, themes, the beginning, middle and end, sentence structure, making an outline, knowing the end of your story, knowing my ideal reader, planning my writing schedules and deadline date — and a heap of other technical things.

And this realisation that I knew nothing, that I had so much to learn, made me feel broken. It made me think I couldn’t be a writer. It all felt so overwhelming before I could even put my pen to paper. I felt incompetent, and I knew for sure that I would fail.

So for the first two years of my gap year, I didn’t write anything. I thought, what was the use of even trying when clearly I know nothing about it.

I now know that when it comes to writing, you don’t need all that jazz — the outline, the plan, the character sketches, the ideal reader.

I knew what good storytelling was; I had read many of them. And I knew how good storytelling made me feel. And that is what I needed to replicate.

All I needed was an idea — fiction or nonfiction, good or bad — and just start writing.

Making Every Minute Of The Day Count

While at the beginning of my gap year, I did nothing because I thought I could not write, when I did pull myself out of the rut and got to work, I went all hustle mode.

I scheduled and planned, and accounted for every minute of my day. Even my pooping had a time slot, and if it didn’t happen at that time, it might as well not pay me a visit until its time slot was back the next day. In a way, I turned all Sheldon Cooper.

Bad idea!

We all would love to have a perfect day where everything works out in favour of us and our plans. But life doesn’t work that way. Life has its own flow, and we mortals have to work with it.

You can’t work all hours of the day. You can’t make time slots for family and friends. Relaxation doesn’t happen at your command. You can’t rush things before their time. And when it comes to writing, I have learnt you cannot have a deadline.

You don’t have the same energy level throughout the day and throughout the week. Therefore we cannot have the same outstanding output level every time we set out to do our jobs. We are humans, not a machine. And even machines need their breaks and services.

Emergencies can come up. Life can get off-track.

You should feel irritated for not being able to stick to your schedule. You should not feel guilty for not making a dent in your project today because a personal matter needs your attention. You don’t need to hustle through situations which require you to slow down and breathe.

It’s good to have routines to keep moving ahead in your projects. But as I read in Austin Kleon’s book, Keep Going, and nodded my head in agreement, “All routines and to-do lists are aspirational.”

You want to get some things done in a day. Some days you’ll achieve that, some days you won’t. And that’s ok because that’s human.

I Forgot About My Reproductive System

During periods, my attention span is that of a puppy — getting distracted every 30 seconds. I have lost count of how many times I got distracted by random thoughts and things while writing this essay.

I forgot how the week before my periods, I am low on energy- mental and physical. I forgot how I am a painful wreck during the periods week and questioning my existence as a woman. I forgot how the week after my periods, I slowly start clearing up my brain fog and get momentum in my life and work. Then I have only one week of sanity and productivity before the cycle repeats itself.

Whether I like it or not, I cannot deny that my biology plays a major role in how my day goes. But I forgot to consider it when I was listening to male productivity gurus.

Your Surroundings Can Make Or Break Your Life

I learnt about this when I read James Clear’s Atomic Habits (a must-read!).

The things around you affect what habits you pick up. If you work in your bedroom, chances are neither will you focus on your work nor will you be able to unplug yourself from work and relax well.

Not having specific places for your different tasks makes you inefficient and your output mediocre.

Now I am not in a situation where I can have separate spaces for each area of my life. My bedroom is where I sleep, learn, read, write, work, leisure, exercise and entertain. I try to manage around it and stay on my up game, but it doesn’t happen always.

But I know the moment I get a chance to set up an environment which is frictionless towards the good habits I want to keep, I will make the changes.

Not Believing In Myself Quicker

As a child, when I would draw a scene or did some work I felt my elders and teachers would be proud of, I would run and show it to them. While they took my work in, I would stare at their faces to gauge how happy I made them. If it was in my favour, I would be pleased with myself. If not, I would feel guilty for not making them happy enough. Their expression and reaction told me if I did a good job or not.

Unconsciously, I learnt the habit of seeking validation from others.

Our childhood is full of events where validation is an important reward we look for. That top grade. That gold medal. That degree. And our education and upbringing system is such that we are trained, with the precision of spies, to look for instant validation and gratification.

When I turned an adult, I realised that nothing in life is instant, and validation from others is corrupted.

We think that how the outside world reacts to us is how life works. Well, we have been holding life from the wrong end. How you feel inside is how the outside world reacts to us. That’s how life really works.

So if you’re not on the same page with yourself, no matter what the world thinks or doesn’t think about you, you are lost.

I wasted a lot of time trying to make others like me when I didn’t know who I was. It wasn’t until I made my relationship with myself the first priority that I started understanding myself. And I have learnt that it doesn’t matter who believes in you and your vision if you don’t do that yourself.