How hard can it be for a professional writer to write for themself?

Ask any writer, and they will say that writing for themselves is the hardest part. Through years of following client briefs, brand guidelines and ideating narratives, somewhere down the trail, a writer often loses their voice. Coupled with deadlines, skewed work-life balance and an anxiety-driven humpback, you almost mentally oppose having to write outside work. A sad phenomenon once you enter the rigmarole of life.

But we must break away from it for what remains of a writer, if not their words?

So I tried. By not compelling myself to write by sticking to a deadline, instead, I let my mind wander and allowed thoughts to get articulated. More often than not, the zeal and motivation were missing. And all along, I had to weed out my guilt and tell myself it was ok to miss a self-set deadline. The result is strewn thoughts articulated on my blogs in their own whimsical manner. 

It has not been easy to get into this groove. In fact, I am yet to get into the discipline. The reason? Flexing my creative muscle outside work, outside rules and outside my comfort zone. As I mentioned before, we need to create more bad art before we find our style and format. The same goes for writing. Seems like I am still in the process of finding a voice and personality for my writing. 

AI has added another layer of consideration. How much of AI-proofing or involvement do I want to add to this practice? Definitely not in the ideation part. But what about rephrasing or rewording? For now, I want to skip that too. I am allowing AI intrusion for basic grammar and spell checks. The moment the line turns yellow, I do not bother to check for better phrasing alternatives. I suppose in the age of AI, some bad writing is what makes you human. 

Here’s to nidificating my writing with my errors, broken phrasing and half-baked thoughts.