My first big writing assignment happened in Grade 7. It started on a Sunday evening.
Dave’s mother: “Do you have any homework tomorrow?”
Dave: “I have to write a report on bats for Mr. Beardsley’s science class tomorrow morning.”
Dave mother: “Is it done?”
Dave: “I haven’t started it.”
Dave’s mother: “Well, get to work.”
So I grabbed the B volume of our World Book Encyclopedia — and spent the next two hours transcribing the ideas around bats (the flying mammals) into a Grade 7 science report. I had no trouble finding the words to put on the paper. I got to stay up until 10:00! And I got an A-!
Our junior high school English teacher, Dan Ireland, made us write a paragraph almost every day. As much as we hated this man for making us write so much, I never had a problem fulfilling his requests. Skills learned from Mr. Ireland have lasted this lifetime.
No problem with writer’s block throughout senior high school. I always got my English and social studies assignments completed in time.
My days in the engineering school put me in less writing than my high school. But for the fewer writing assignments, I had more trouble finding a working typewriter than finding the words to put into that machine. And this writing was cutting into my beer-drinking time.
I did some writing in my engineering work. When I went into business, there was a lot more writing to do. Again, I was never flummoxed to get this work done.
As a life adventure, I taught English in Czechoslovakia. It was there that I discovered how language was more technical than instinctual. I was using my new skills to write better sentences and paragraphs. I developed a business English program, focusing on “numbers English.” I worked as a technical writer for engineering software programs; I enjoyed writing instructions! I wrote about my alternative democracy. I had another 10 or so inventions, which required many words to explain these complex concepts. In all these projects, I never had problems putting sentences, paragraphs, and a logical manuscript together. Yes, there were a few times when I couldn’t find the mojo to write. I just stopped and did something else. But when I came back the next day, I could pick up where I left off. And I haven’t had any problems crafting Medium articles like this one. I could write an article a day — if the financial reward was a little more rewarding.
When people talk about “Writer’s Block,” I had no idea what they were talking about.
The Writing Project from Hell
Fifty-three years after my Grade 7 science report, I got my first bad case of Writer’s Block.
I have become a bit of a shut-in since Covid. I noticed my casual conversation was “less than articulate.” So I joined an online Toastmaster’s Club to get some “talking practice.” For some reason, I thought I needed some practice with online presentations, using Power Point (PPT) and Zoom. I thought a project I had shelved 25 years ago would be a good fit for Zoom and PPT.
That project was a consultation workshop. In this workshop, I taught participants how to make consultative decisions, which is much different than decisions made by power or democracy. It had short lectures and practice sessions. I adjusted the workshop to fit the constraints of the “paying” entities. As I was perfecting this workshop, I was seeing the immense challenges of marketing and organizing the workshop. I wasn’t seeing the business matrix to pay me a reasonable wage. Then I got a long-term illness, and the project went on the shelf. Toastmasters brought it back to world of the “undusted.”
My speech went well. I had so much more to say about consultation than the Toastmasters' eight minutes would allow. I decided to write and deliver a second speech on consultation. While building this second speech I could see how the new features of PPT could be turned into an online video. After I delivered my second speech, I dived into this online project.
My two Toastmaster speeches gave me two PPT presentations to start the project off. I could see these presentations were somewhat logically organized, but they were holding too much information in too short of space. So I did some mapping and came up with six broad categories — each category was to become its own video segment of the workshop.
All was well to this point
The next step was to put each slide of the two Toastmaster PPTs into one of the six categories. That’s when the writer’s block hit me.
I struggled to move those slides over to the six categories. I don’t know why I had this struggle. It’s not like the original files were being destroyed. But it was a struggle.
Once I moved things over, I was seeing lots of necessary editing. Sometimes I was moving points from one slide to another. Sometimes I was deleting points. Sometimes I was combining slides. Sometimes I was dividing one slide into two. Sometimes I was adding new slides with new information. Often I was reordering slides, making adjustments to the other slides to reflect a good transition. I did not like doing this work at all.
I had about a one-hour daily limit for this editing. After that hour, I was mentally baked. I could not do anymore. I went to easier tasks, like cleaning my house or writing a Medium article. I just did not want to do this PPT work. But forcing myself to put in this one hour a day meant the project was still getting done.
I don’t understand why I was so stymied. Consultation is a topic I have a lot of passion for. But a couple of years ago, old age found me, and I lost a lot of physical stamina. Maybe that was it, but I can still do other writing projects. Or maybe it is the nature of PPT presentations, which do require different way of thinking and writing. Maybe my older brain was not ready for this learning curve. And this workshop was too big of a project for me at this time in my life! Whatever the cause, each day was one hour of forced labor.
Just when I thought I was nearly finished . . . .
My two Toastmaster speeches were mostly of an ad-hoc nature. While giving these speeches, I clicked through the PPT animations. As each animation “flew in,” it triggered my brain to release whatever I had stored in my mind. I knew my stuff. I believe my first speech went reasonably well, but my second speech was on the “wooden side.”
For the workshop, I decided to continue with the ad-hoc approach. Let the animations trigger what I had to say. I thought if it took a few retakes to get a reasonable ad-hoc audio for a slide, that would be OK. But I had a lot more to say than those two Toastmaster speeches. The workshop would be at least five times as big as the two Toastmaster speeches. Lots of little quips to remember!
When I started recording, I could tell my speaking was bland and intermittent. I could see that I was likely to forget too many important quips. The ad-hoc approach was going to produce a below-mediocre presentation, even with several retakes for each slide. This workshop was, for sure, going to go nowhere with me speaking in that style.
PPT now has an excellent teleprompter feature — and I started writing teleprompter script. But similar to re-arranging my slides, I could not do more than one hour a day of teleprompter writing. I did not want to do this writing task either.
My Therapist
One of the first people I connected with on Medium was Christina M. Ward. We developed some rapport. But truth be told, we are not exactly fans of each other’s writing. When the feeds are working in our favor, we do find ourselves interacting once or twice a year. We have a nice friendly chat.
One of her articles came up on my feed. I clicked, read, and commented. Somehow we got into a discussion about my tribulations with this project. We had about five or six exchanges before a natural end came to our discussion.
When I got back to work, I had a lot more enthusiasm for the project. And I was able to put in three or four hours a day. I got more done in the next two weeks than the previous two months.
Maybe Christina should become a writer’s therapist!
And I should pay her. But it seems I have taken a vow of poverty sometime in my past. Not sure where or when I took this vow, but it must be the reason why I am in the financial state I am currently in.
The Recording
It took four days to do all the recording. This was faster than I expected, and I suspect the teleprompter script had a lot to do with this efficiency.
As well, had I gone ad-hoc, I would have been forced to dig the words from the back of my mind, giving secondary consideration to exactness, cadence, and expressiveness. But with the teleprompter, I was able to get the exact words I wanted, which was naturally followed by the right cadence and expressions (most of the time). My teleprompter presentation is almost professional! So it was a good investment to write the teleprompter script. I can’t blame a poor presentation as the reason for the failure of this project.
This is the second time I’ve videotaped my TDG works. I find “acting” in front of a videorecorder is draining work. But I was in a good frame of mind. While limiting my recording sessions to three-four hours a day, I’m kind of surprised it got done in four days.
It’s been a while since I praised a piece of software. But PowerPoint figured out what I needed before I knew what I needed. The PPT tutorials were great. The PPT menus were quite intuitive. There were only a few wrestling moments with software. For the size of this project and the many new things I had to learn, my software battles were quite small.
When I was doing the recording, I was also seeing ways to improve the presentation. I knew this was going to happen: I do have a perfectionist nature in me. So I prepared myself to discard such improvements — and focus on the teleprompter script. Whatever was on the slides and teleprompter script was at least 90% of what I wanted to be on the slides and teleprompter script. There was no sense editing my work on the fly to get another 5% in. This project was big enough. It was good enough. And it needed to be done by the end of June!
Thanks again to Christina for listening to my woes and putting my mind in a more productive place.
Conclusion
Given the technical experience I just gained, I should build similar presentations for other aspects of my Tiered Democratic Governance. But I’m not sure I want another session of writer’s block. Writing Medium articles is so much easier.
Besides, six years ago I created videos based on each chapter of the TDG book. These videos are far from great: I can’t even call them “mediocre.” But if the viewers are forgiving of my wooden presentation, these videos still tell the approach to TDG governance reasonably well. Methinks I won’t be reworking these videos.
Well, the consultation workshop is now out there for the public to investigate, evaluate, and learn. It has always been a great sense of relief and satisfaction to move something bouncing between my ears to “being out there.” It is another tool to help bring credibility to the TDG.
Where this workshop and the TDG now goes next is more up to “the universe” than my efforts.
Published on Medium 2024
I Tried to Save the USA in 2009
