It's day three of our trip to Breckenridge, Colorado; I've tagged along to help Linda with her "Jewelry Art by Linda" exhibition at the art show that Breckenridge hosts every year during Labor Day weekend.

Breckenridge is a long way from home, and on the first day, we drove eight hours to arrive at the art show on time. We checked in to our Airbnb, and on day two, we slept in and picked up snacks and groceries from the local market before setting up the exhibition.

It's day three, and I've just dropped Linda off at her art show. Sitting in our rented condo, I recognize the slow, creeping signs of depression and the underlying frustration that comes with a feeling of inadequacy. Today's emotion is born of fatigue from the past three weeks of training and general frustration and desire to generate more and better content for my blog sites. I understand well enough to be cautious that I don't spend too much time reinventing my content creation wheel; however, I plop down on the couch and pull up the Medium website to see if someone has discovered and published the magic bullet I need.

I read 33 blog articles, and while all were good, most were a recantation of things I had already read or tried. One lingered at the back of my mind, and it wasn't until I repeated the process the following morning that two stories connected that would change my life.

Nothing Is Too Obvious to Write About ~ David B. Clear (1)

and

Why Atomic Writing Is The One Medium Every New Creator Needs To Master ~ Ev Chapman (2)

Nothing Is Too Obvious to Write About

I currently have 65 ideas queued up and ready to write about. Each morning during my writing time, I glance at the list, trying to find the spark that initiated the idea in the first place. David described my experience to a tee in his first four paragraphs (his descriptions are much more fun, i.e., ripped off my eyeballs, pizza coma, and a 2000-volt hot wire up my... you get the idea).

I read about an idea that's new to me.
I have a flash of insight.
I added the idea to my list of topics.
Later, all the spark is gone, and it's a dull, trivial thing.

David's point is crystal clear, "just because an idea isn't shiny to you anymore, doesn't mean it won't be shiny or sparkling to someone else."

Now, all I needed was a method to implement David's madness (of writing about trivial things).

Why Atomic Writing Is The One Medium Every New Creator Needs To Master

The idea of atomic writing is familiar to me, having spent several years swirling around the Zettelkasten drain. (3) In all that time, I've bounced between various forms of atomic writing, first the short version, i.e., Progressive Summarization. (4) Longer versions designed to fill a specific niche known as functionally atomic notes. (5) Back to shorter versions designed to be building blocks, (6) finally settling on Sascha Fasts' One idea, one note. (7)

Ev's blog essay reinforced choosing a single view and creating a single note about that view. Ev's link to ship30for30 led me to a template article (8) that now provides the perfect guideline for all things trivial, and best of all, it perfectly matches my writing style.

Thank you to everyone who makes the time to write content for Medium. I have enjoyed reading your written words immensely and adopting numerous ideas for my own benefit.

Written September 8, 2023
Editorial assistance by Grammarly.

Posted simultaneously at Medium.com

Footnotes and References

(1) Clear, David B. (July 28, 2023) “Nothing Is Too Obvious to Write About” Medium. Retrieved from: https://writingcooperative.com/nothing-is-too-obvious-to-write-about-955e2c7e20fd

(2) Chapman, Ev (July 9, 2022) “Why Atomic Writing Is The One Medium Every New Creator Needs To Master” Medium. Retrieved from: https://evchapman.medium.com/why-atomic-writing-is-the-one-medium-every-new-creator-needs-to-master-c57532bba67c

(3) My Blog Article: The Zettelkasten's Unrelenting Enslavement

(4) Forte, Tiago (December 27, 2017) "Progressive Summarization: A Practical Technique for Designing Discoverable Notes" Forte Labs. Retrieved from: https://fortelabs.com/blog/progressive-summarization-a-practical-technique-for-designing-discoverable-notes/

(5) Argonsnorts. (2020, March 06). Is the three-layer structure of evidence a generally useful principle? Zettelkasten.de Forum. Retrieved from: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/4761/#Comment_4761

(6) Tietze, Christian (ctietze). (December 2021) Zettelkasten.de. https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/13765/#Comment_13765

(7) Fast, Sascha. (April 18, 2023) "Why the Single Note Matters." Zettelkasten.de. https://zettelkasten.de/posts/why-single-note-matters/

(8) Nicole, Jerine (n.d.) "How to write an atomic essay - A beginner's guide" ship30for30.com. Retrieved from: https://www.ship30for30.com/post/how-to-write-an-atomic-essay-a-beginners-guide