Despite not hitting my target of a post per day for every day in November, I’m not going to call Blogvember 2014 an outright failure. As far as actual posts go, I wrote the same number of posts during November that I did for an entire year previously — 24 posts in November, 24 posts from October 2013 to October 2014 — which kind of explains why Blogvember was so needed. In terms of getting back into writing, Blogvember was exactly the kind of thing I needed, both to reassure myself I was capable of writing blog posts, and in terms of getting stuff up on my blog.

But all that said and done, writing is still undeniably hard. It’s not that I don’t have stuff to write about, as evidenced by the past month, but that actually getting words down into text form is something that just doesn’t happen without forcing it. That is, I can do it, but only if I’ve exhausted all other options. Only if I can’t sleep. Only if I haven’t played through as much Dragon Age Inquisition as I can tolerate. Only if no friends are online in Dota 2, and I don’t feel like queueing solo. You can see where this is going.

A lot of the time, it just comes down to motivation. I have no problems with getting paid to write, or writing as a hobby — but personal writing that only my blog audience sees is something entirely different. I have plenty to say about Dota 2, but finding the motivation to put those words down is hard. I have a few thoughts on Shadows of Mordor ready to go, but lack the motivation to finish it, or any of my other reviews. I could finish my story on getting the Sarkhan pin at PAX Aus this year any time I want, but what’s the point?

I want to write one thing every week. One thing every week doesn’t seem unachievable, especially seeing as I’m do daily news pieces for a number of outlets. But perhaps they’re part of the problem: after doing ~1400 words on Apple and consumer technology every day, I just can’t bring myself to bash out another couple of hundred, no matter how fascinating the topic.

I would have been an OK arts student. But apparently, a terrible writer.

These words are not a part of Blogvember 14, but they are related to the topic. Read more Blogvember posts, if you’re so inclined.