Have I Stopped Writing?

Looking back, the last time I published anything was March this year. Now it's August — nearly half a year has passed. For one thing, I genuinely haven't had the time or patience to sit still in front of a computer and spend hours typing away at a keyboard. For another, in this age of fragmentation, my thinking seems to have fragmented along with it. I often have moments of sudden inspiration, but it's hard to organize them into a lengthy essay. Every time I try to write something, it's like being constipated on a toilet — the will is there, but the output just won't come, even if what I'm trying to produce could generously be called crap.

To address this, I made two changes. First, since I'd grown weary of staring at a computer for extended periods, I decided to try a different medium — I bought paper and pens and started recording things in different places using different tools. Second, since all I had were fragmented thoughts, I'd capture them the moment they arose instead of always trying to organize them into complete articles. That kind of assembly could wait.

A while back, traveling through Southeast Asia, I was walking along the beach in Penang when something stirred in me. I sat down right there on the sand, opened my notebook, and began recording my observations in the most traditional way possible. The first thing I noticed was the incongruity of this act against its surroundings, which gave me a wonderfully novel feeling. In this day and age, paper books and physical stationery have become niche, unfamiliar objects — outside of specific settings like schools, you rarely see them anymore. Worse still, reading a book in public has become the kind of behavior that draws strange looks, as though you're putting on an act. But at that moment, as a foreigner in another country, I was no longer afraid of the gazes around me. And because there were so many international visitors there — people of all kinds — everyone had grown accustomed to diversity. There was no longer that rejection of the unfamiliar, and nobody paid much attention to what others were doing. This was perhaps the greatest takeaway from my time in Southeast Asia: I became bolder about doing things that felt out of place.

Back to the sense of incongruity of writing with pen and paper on a beach — I found that while this feeling drew away part of my attention, it simultaneously sparked a kind of momentum that kept me going. In that state, I sometimes couldn't stop writing until something beyond my control interrupted me. Though most of what I wrote was stream-of-consciousness, a pile-up of meaningless words, nobody could see it, so I didn't overthink. And scattered among it all, there were always a few sparkling gems, so it wasn't entirely useless. This further solidified a feeling I'd held for a long time: I am someone who needs an audience. In a noisy, bustling café, I focus better on work. In a crowded train station, I'm more able to concentrate on the book in my hands. On a beach with people coming and going, I'm more inclined to record my thoughts. I'm not the kind of person who can toil away in obscurity, selflessly contributing behind the scenes. I need to be seen — or at least, my work needs to be seen. Perhaps that's why I built a blog, and why I make independent websites and apps.

Maybe I was just born to be a show-off.

I mentioned two changes earlier — the other one is recording those little waves that suddenly ripple through my mind. I used to jot them down in my phone's built-in Notes app, but it wasn't designed for this kind of quick, short-form need, so it wasn't very convenient. My habit of reinventing the wheel flared up again, and I ended up building my own app specifically for capturing those flashes of inspiration. The app is called "Spark Memos" (星火记 in Chinese), and you can find it on the iOS App Store. As its name suggests, I want it to quickly catch those sparks that flicker and vanish in an instant.

I use Spark Memos to record everyday thoughts, excerpts from books I'm reading, travel notes, seed ideas for longer articles, and even diary entries and web pages I want to read later.

For example, when I saw an adorable little cat, I wrote:

Our love for cats and dogs is almost entirely selfless. We're willing to love them without any prejudice — we love all cats and dogs. But our love for people is so stingy. We impose all sorts of conditions. We crave something in return.

While reading an English-language book, I came across a tricky sentence and noted:

You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backwards.

"Rather than retreating too far, it's better to face things head-on, even if you fall flat."

1. might as well: A phrase suggesting recommendation or speculation, meaning "you may as well" or "rather… than." It implies both options aren't great, but one might be slightly better.
2. fall flat on your face: An idiom meaning "to fail completely" or "to fall on your face." It describes someone attempting something and failing spectacularly.
3. lean over too far backwards: Literally "leaning back too far," metaphorically meaning "to be overly cautious" or "to play it too safe." Here it suggests that being too afraid of failure leads to missed opportunities.

There are other scenarios I won't list one by one.

Because I'm well aware that recording is practically synonymous with forgetting — much of what's written down never gets revisited — I plan to add features that make review easier, such as random note cards, note reminders, and the like.

If you've read this far, you've probably figured out this is a promotional post. So since you've made it all the way here, why not head to the App Store and search for "Spark Memos"? Or if you can't wait, you can go straight to this link.