(29 May 2019 – I just typed this up and was going to post it on r/AmateurWritersBlock – but — I’m banned from the subreddit. I’m blocked from writers block. That is the kind of writers block I experience everyday. Gate Keepers with few ideas – but lots of ideas about who else to block and how to stop ideas.)

I was encouraged as a writer in college by various teachers and writers. But, I was implement tied many times. Vast hours of time and a desk and paper and pen and typewriter would be before me… to no end.

Over the years I kept a personal journal. I had no particular aim, or format or… anything. I started in high school after reading about Henry Thoreau and Winston Smith keeping journals of their thoughts.

Some days I wrote many pages; sometimes a month or two would pass with no entry. When I was in a happy relation with a woman I usually wrote less. My happy thoughts were poured into my partner, not onto paper.

Sometimes I had a bound volume I bought at a stationary store, and other times I had left over school notebooks. When I took ‘Behavioral Educational Psychology’ in graduate school I began to look at my journal as an activity I could target.

I abandoned the idea of a polished ready-to-publish writing style that was formal and a little stiff. I decided that I wanted to go for maximum number of pages put out. Forget about the quality. I started to write things I would never want published. I was writing on paper with a pen and no one was reading what I had written anyway. This was a journal that was sitting in my desk draw when I wasn’t writing in it.

I hardly ever went back and read the journal myself. I knew what was written there, mostly. The very act of writing things down fixes them in my head in a different way than vague non-verbal thoughts that drift in and out of my consciousness.

I also started to use any paper that was at hand for the journal. I used scrap paper that had printing on one side and was blank on the back. I began to ad a lot more illustrations and drawings to the journal.

I had no idea of publishing, or any one’s interest in what I wrote in my journal. I had a kind of complete freedom. Worthless journal becomes priceless escape into literary freedom. But… freedom to do what?

Learn to write… for a start. Producing lots of words and sentences and paragraphs and pages can lead one to be able to repeat the acts easily and out of habit. I learned to ‘touch-type’ or whatever they call ‘not looking at the keyboard’ when typing. I was in high school when boys didn’t learn to type because that was a female secretary kind of thing. But I took the class in summer school with twenty-nine females. So, I can close my eyes and the words flow through my fingers at a pretty fast pace.

When I go to comment on some news story on some subreddit or other message board I will formulate a thought and type. I usually think I have a couple of sentences. When I look I usually have long paragraphs. And, I usually have more to say, and additional thoughts, and much to write.

By writing everyday in a journal I became accustomed to putting my thoughts into words and sentences and paragraphs in my head, and then on paper, or on a computer screen. I have no ‘block.’ Honestly, I can’t imagine having ‘writer’s block.’