How I transition from writing in my journal to writing on screen

Or: Why Writers’ Block comes back with a vengeance when you make that shift. And what you can do about it…

One reason I had such a hard time getting words onto the page while I was writing my thesis was because I felt such a massive difference between what I was writing in my journal and what I thought I needed to write for my PhD. 

In my journal, I would write my research notes – including any thoughts and feelings I had about what I was researching, spontaneous and intuitive connections between ideas, deeper insights that were driving my enquiry, and my most passionate inspirations about why my research mattered. 

But all that felt very, deeply, private to me. 

When I looked at what other academic researchers were writing about in a similar context, the spiritual motives behind my work seemed misplaced, irrelevant – even crass. 

I did not dare to speak my truth or show who I truly was. In case of being found out as the impostor that I believed myself to be. Not good enough. Not really deserving of my place or my position. Ultimately, a fraud and a fake; and someone whose ideas were ludicrous, if not dangerous. 

Impostor Syndrome. 

Anyone? 

Whether you’re writing a thesis (as I was), or you’re writing your coaching book, or even creating written content for your social media or Substack, the fear of being ‘found out’ can be a strong defence mechanism that our critical mind or ego will use to protect us at all costs. 

So what that usually means is, NOT WRITING ANYTHING. To keep ourselves safe from criticism and accusation. Or, writing something abstract and nebulous that doesn’t really carry weight or convey how we really see the world. 

Other fears and pressures might also show up for you in your particular niche. Many of the most common involve not being good enough, not knowing enough, not having enough experience or qualifications, and other variations of simply not being ‘enough’. 

How you move through this may depend on the modalities that you work with for self-development and healing. They all point us back towards wounding around our innate sense of self-worth, self-value, and the need to receive external validation from the people around us to create a sense of permission to do and say what we are truly here to say and do. 

The act of writing, itself, can be a powerful trigger for this kind of wounding to show up. Especially writing on screen. 

Photo by sarah b on Unsplash

When we’re taught to write in the modern western world, we’re typically in an educational context that teaches us we’ll be judged, validated, and deemed worthy (or not) by our writing. We’re taught how to get it right, follow the rules, do what the examiners need to see from us. Every subject that we study to exam level – however creative or physical – has a written component by which we are judged. 

Often, from the moment we pick up a pen or pencil, we are being scrutinised for our value in a system that judges us by its own metrics. 

If you pursued your education further, you’ll likely have used a computer to write your essays – by which you will have been judged, examined, evaluated, and categorised according to external criteria. 

If you read books, newspapers, reports or articles – either in paper or on screen – you’ll be exposed to typed fonts as the standard for ‘good quality writing’, in whatever ways that means in your field, or within your subconscious. 

When we then sit down ourselves to write on the screen – because we have a sense that what we’re going to write has a more public purpose than what we’ve already written in our journals – it can be easy for these unconscious anxieties, fears and traumas to come to the surface. 

We start to wonder and say to ourselves, “Who am I to write this?” “I don’t feel qualified enough to say this” “If I publish this, people will discover the truth of who I really am (i.e. not good enough)”. 

Oof. 

No wonder it can be so hard to make that transition to writing on the screen from happily scribbling in your journal.

That’s why I created this simple ritual to support myself, and other visionary writers like you, with making that transition easier. I use this practice every time I sit down to start writing on my MacBook. It only takes a few minutes, and it makes a massive impact on the quality and quantity of the words I’m able to produce in any given writing session. 

The Black-Screen Writing Ritual:

When I first sit down to write on screen, I open up a Word document (you can use whatever writing software you prefer – I like Word for this because it’s linear, clean, and simple), set my cursor at the top of the page and I turn the screen brightness all the way down to black. 

This way, when I first start typing, I can’t see what I’m writing. It allows me to practice being in the writing-state of being that we cultivated in the Ritual Writing Warm Up, but this time I’m doing it on the screen. When I can’t see what I’m typing, I’m not checking for errors as I go. I’m not trying to perfect my words and stifling the flow. I’m simply allowing that energy to move through my body and out onto the screen. 

I’m writing without judgement, without criticism, without editing and without censorship. Nobody needs to see this. It’s just for me. It’s my own warm up to get me ready for what I really want to write. 

I’ll write like this for up to about 5 or 10 minutes, depending on how long I need to get into the flow, and how long I have for this particular writing session. 

After a while, I’ll feel ready to turn the screen back up and starting writing more purposefully. Keeping open to the flow of my breath, my belly, my body as I write. Keeping a listening ear open to the words that want to move through me. 

Any time I need or want to come back to this, I can turn the screen brightness down again and do some more ‘blind writing’ to get back into my rhythm.

I learned this technique from my friend, the poet CA Conrad, who uses this practice as a foundation to create intuitive somatic poetry.

Here are some other tips for lessening the pressure that writing on screen can stimulate:

·      Put your document into Dark Mode, so that you are writing on a black background rather than black text on a white page. Again, this helps to alleviate the feeling that you have to write something finished, perfect, professional from the moment you sit down. You’ll revisit to get the words up to publishing standard before you let them go. So you can relax now, and just write what’s there to be written. 

·      Change the font colour to something other than black/white. How does it feel to write with purple text on a black background, for example? 

I hope these suggestions will help you find more ease and flow in your writing practice, so that you can give yourself full permission to get YOUR words onto the page, where they belong. Because you are enough. And your wisdom is a gift to be shared. 

If this feels resonant for you and you’d like to explore more, you can subscribe for regular updates, or go here to get my book, Writing & Thriving: Writing Tips and Wellbeing Tricks for Visionary Writers.