Almost 2 years ago to the day, I was scrolling through my WordPress feed, desperate to connect with a publication, attract readers, and advance my fledgling career as a writer.
One of the sites I followed was called Pointless Overthinking. This appealed to me a great deal because I often characterized my own writing by using those two words. As I started poking around the Pointless Overthinking website, I came across a question that changed my experience as a writer. The question was:
Would you like to write for us?
Heck yeah!
I read the information and decided I would apply as a guest blogger, where perhaps one of my pieces could be published on the Pointless Overthinking site. I typed up an email, attached some links to some of my best pieces, and sent it off to this guy named Troy Headrick, who I assumed would take a good while to respond, if he did at all.
Turns out I was wrong on several counts. Not only did Troy respond within a few days, he also offered me the position of full-time writer for the site (which meant posting new pieces once per week).
I was super excited! Pointless Overthinking featured thousands of posts by a wide variety of talented writers- and they had a pretty good following with strong reader engagement. It was like I had hit the writer’s jackpot!
So I started writing. One piece per week. Posted each Friday. New stuff; sometimes double posted to my personal Five O’Clock Shadow blog too.
I met the rest of the Pointless Overthinking team, plus a whole bunch of other great writers. Many more people started seeing and reading my material. We had conversations about it in the comment section and in some cases, I made some new friends; like modern day pen pals.
Not too long after I joined the Pointless Overthinking staff in March 2022, Troy Headrick asked me to join the group’s leadership committee. I was surprised, as I hadn’t been on board very long, but I was very happy to be asked and excited to do it. The team overhauled the website and changed the name to its current one- Wise & Shine.
I really enjoyed working on the leadership team. I loved writing new pieces each week and having them be seen and read by more people than before. I was proud to be part of a team of excellent writers, sharing pieces that ranged from important to entertaining.
As a writer, I was off and running. But runners get tired, even the really strong ones. After a long while, I noticed that “writer’s block” was closing in on me from behind. I took the breaks I needed to sustain my writing, plus I still had enough material to continue making new posts each week as scheduled (although admittedly, a few were lacking).
As I went on, I realized that writer’s block wasn’t really the problem. My writer’s mind was not blocked, it was just becoming empty.
And that’s how I got to today.
Saxophonist Charlie Parker famously said, “If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.” Replace the word “horn” with “pen” and the meaning still applies.
Parker was right, but I think there’s a step missing. In order to have things come out of your horn or pen, you must first live them, and then, allow them to settle. In other words, those life experiences have to soak into your being in some way in order for them to, in a sense, be regurgitated outwardly into some form of art, creativity or writing.
This “settling step” is where I’m struggling right now.
I’m lucky that my days are full of things I enjoy; writing, musical projects, gigs, etc. Life is good but it’s busy! Too busy for things to be soaking in at a good pace. The writing deadlines come fast. My “ready to regurgitate into a written piece” tempo is slower.
And that’s why I’m struggling to write. I need more free time to let things coagulate in my head.
As this has been the case on and off for a while now, I have felt my internal writing machine gradually grinding to a halt.
All this is to say that I’m taking a leave of absence from Wise & Shine until I have something new to say. I’m hoping the pen will flow again after a few weeks or months, but in case they don’t, I just wanted to properly acknowledge how I ended up writing for Wise & Shine, meeting great people, and becoming part of something I’m proud of. Hopefully this post accomplishes that.
Thanks to everyone who I’ve worked with at Wise & Shine. Thanks to all who’ve read the site regularly- I appreciate you! And thanks especially to Troy Headrick, who took a chance on me as a writer, helped me develop into a better one, and introduced me to a bunch of new friends, including himself.
See you when the writing juices flow again.
Follow Wise & Shine for more stories from our talented staff. You can also visit Todd’s personal Five O’Clock Shadow blog. For more on Todd as a musician, visit toddfulginiti.com or listen to his music on Spotify, AppleMusic, etc…