🌐 DailyMinz 1st Anniversary, Also Say About: How to Maintain Output Stream of Creation

One year ago, this date witnessed the birth of DailyMinz. I hope her can contain my all kinds of ideas and thoughts. Looking back today, this wish comes true smoothly. The problem is no longer nowhere to record and share humble views, but my productivity lagging the update’s shortage. I beware of my shallow knowledge and, in order to sustain output streams, it is necessary to deepen study and training more and more.

It’s my limit to update once a month. For articles in the category of “Academic Arguments”, I have to spare a rather long time to prepare before writing. Thus, though these posts are the backbone of this blog, however, I can’t bear the burden of depending barely on them for all the updates. So, you readers can see that this site is attempting to introduce posts in different categories to fill the blank outside “Arguments”, enriching this site. One of the attempts is “Book Reviews”, including reviews in detail on books and overviews and recommendations; another attempt is trying to analyze the non-textual media like videos. I hope to improve update frequency relying on this, though the effect seems to be insignificant. It turns out to be that new columns spread out thin the concentration of updates. Looking at the new series, unabandoned but undone, is nothing more than irritating myself.

Maybe the most necessary thing next is to continue the unfinished. New ideas emerging is surely attracting, but for authors, it tops the list that to settle down and complete the items at hand. As long as the world spins, the topics worth writing won’t run out. In this case there’s no need to worry about new attracting topics are not written yet and mess up the present work. The blog has been walked through some time. Now it is the time when passion and sense of novelty fade, but I wish I could insist pushing her further. If I were done, I would be able to boost for this achievement. On the first anniversary of my blog, let me offer these brief words as praise.
Speaking of insistence, I happen to have some thoughts to share with everyone on this anniversary.

Why Writing?

It’s impossible to say that writing is not for sharing, all the discourse solidified by writing presuppose the existence of readers, even diaries have their writers as (under ideal circumstances, the only) readers. Of course, writing is not barely for sharing. Text written down, in the first place, is shared to us ourselves. Solidifying the text on physical carriers, the writer gains ability to appreciate, examine, revise, and preserve his ideas.

Externalizing the content of thoughts is a vital step. Human’s brain is no comparison with hard disk. The most die-hard belief though may have vagueness and loopholes. I can’t see myself through my own eyes, I have to get help from my duplicates and reflections. My duplicates duplicate me, but at the moment they come into being, they evade from me and become independent existence and intended objects. When they came into being, they fixed the me at this very moment as a statue for me to examine and preserve. Mirrors make humans see themselves clearly, while cameras bless people with a gift to copy the world. The meaning is that they assure the accuracy and, in the meantime, create an image of Reality. So does the art. Art’s nature is nothing more than capturing and reproducing moments of Reality for posterity to judge.

As an ordinary, I am sincerely aware that I am not the one gifted, so I can’t trust the mind edifice built by merely brain’s performance. The disadvantage of thought is single thread, focusing on one thing while neglecting another. Externalizing the thought and its production, solidifying them on the paper, shifting them from the single-linear chronological mode of existence and performance to a synchronic one, and freeing them from being distorted unintentionally by the memory, are more than necessary. To implement, to rein in the unfettered imagination with logic and grammars, to make it be able to accept reflections and judgement in detail, are the meaning of writing for the writers. Writing allows us to examine ourselves as we’re examining others.

When I write I am forced to organize language. This mind activity forces me to filter irrational productions and pré-réflexive prejudice, ultimately, resulting in two possible terminations: first, my opinion stands firmer in a more rational and scientific way; second, my opinion is declined by myself. If lacking self-filtering, I don’t know how many obsessive beliefs will hide under my cognition and control me. Writing makes this filter a forced and manifest action, it’s essential for creatures that are easily becoming arrogant like humans. Besides, the existence of readers also provides external driving power for this process. Readers’ feedback, where authors see themselves from, is very important for authors. And this might expose more unprecedented errors, or space to strive taller, or compliments and encouragement, into the sun. Text presupposes readers and expects readers. Text requires readers to explain and reveal itself to ultimately accomplish itself, so it is the nature of share of the text.

Vice versa, the text by writers can also be beneficial for readers. For writers with lofty ambitions, there is no need to elaborate.

The Slow Streams Steadily

I’ve seen many high-quality blogs suspending further updates or shifting to microblogging. I can’t comment on their choices from my own perspective. Nevertheless, I for sure feel sorry for these sites and worried for the possibility that my blog may also get trapped in that situation. Non-profit writers’ activities are fragile that any disturbance from the real life can waver and even quench the passion for creation.

One of the important reasons is the depressing desire to express, while another reason is the environment for creative work. Both two factors can empower creative activities and also suppress the enthusiasm. As for how to deal with one’s own mood, I don’t have good methods. If you do, please share with us in the comments below. As for how to face the disappointing environment, what I can think of is to change it, to escape as a coping way. Thus, I recently have been focusing on constructing the English edition of the blog and anyway, I got a somewhat nice beginning at last.

A friendly blog, which is concentrating on ACG, Xeonzilla, has encountered the problem of the depressing desire to create as well, and published a post (in Chinese), casting spotlight on the difficulties that every blogger will encounter incisively:

1. Interests changed
2. Reality’s restriction

Or rather, these are the common problems we modern people who are trying to evade the go-with-the-flow status will be faced with. Anyhow for creators, these problems are particularly heavy. I mentioned at the end of Brain Rot: Rich in Info, Ragged in Wisdom (in Chinese) that all sorts of chores in modern society are attempting to thieve our attention, but the attention is finite anyway. This is a question must be considered by every blogger that how to take back the stolen attention again. For me, writing the blog itself is a part of attention re-claiming training.

It is essential to accept some tricks. My methods for fighting against laziness to update are: (1) setting up “series”, (2) ensuring topics available, and (3) participating in some writing events. Setting up article series schedules ensures that there is an apparent main line, ensuring topics available avoids speechlessness, and participation exploits external force urging deadlines. Of course, these tricks make sure that “there is something to say,” sustaining output, but unable to improve update frequency (undoubtedly, after all the writing speed is as fast as it should be). If the blog type permits, use life and career as materials are okay too. To this extent I envy technology bloggers whose jobs are strongly related with their writings, as a result they possess exceedingly high update motion. (However, looking around, in the Simplified Chinese world, blogs are almost entirely technology-related, and their content is severely homogenized, which I think is a pathological condition.)

Faced with force majeure, we shouldn’t force ourselves to update as soon as possible. Writing should be a pleasurable and autonomous progress. To fill the lag in the update planning, enforcing yourself to acquire something disliked and uninterested will also devastate fun of writing. It is the slow brook that streams steadily and sturdily. Let ideas sediment at heart. There is always a random moment when words spontaneously flow from the nib.

Also Be a Reader

Writers barely writing ducking heads is no good. They need often be readers too and visit others’ websites. The habit to exchange links is reserved in Chinese world, so we are supposed to take advantage of it.

When speaking on someone else’s turf, you can’t always say whatever you want. That’s when your manners and thinking skills are put to the test. Make yourself a well-behaved reader so that outside the blog world in the much noisier places on the internet you won’t put yourself at the mercy of ire.

When we become readers, while judging others, we tend to wear a more critical eye. In the process of scrutinizing others, we unconsciously reflect on ourselves: Am I making the same mistakes? Are their shortcomings also mine? What pitfalls can I learn from this to avoid? And so on. Solving other people’s problems is also a way of developing our own problem-solving skills — it’s a win-win situation.

The output stream shouldn’t just consist of articles on your own blog; it should also include comments and feedback on other people’s websites. Being a “responsive reader” encourages other authors and hones your own writing skills. Discussions can also reveal many things worth writing about on your own blog. I’ve recently been trying to write “long comments,” hoping to spark discussion and refine my own technique of offering initial thoughts. Some websites have strict word limits for comments, and I don’t quite understand the rationale behind these limits. Blogs, as long-form content platforms, should be more lenient regarding word counts.

Comments can also serve as a guide or draft for new articles. Creating a topic “out of thin air” for writing might sometimes be difficult even with much thought, but extending and expanding on existing articles should be much easier. This is why I encourage writing long comments; they are easier to rewrite into new articles.

So what are you waiting for? Comment something to cheer this pitiful author up! 😭