I’m not enjoying what I’m going through lately. In a sentence, I don’t know what to write about. A few months ago, I was able to write a blog entry a day – sometimes two – without running out of writing juice. Lately, however, I’ve been struggling to get out one entry every three or four days. It’s not that I’ve lost interest in my blog – not at all – it’s just that when I sit down to write, I come up with nothing. In a way, I think I’m fighting a bit of blog stage fright. I’ve noted that this inability to write started right around the time I was accepted into 9Rules. I think that subconsciously, I know far more people are hitting my site now, and in turn, I’m more than a bit nervous about what to write. I’m suffering the age old problem of, “What if they don’t like what I write? What could I write about that they’d like?” Scrivs touched on this very problem on the 9Rules blog recently. Here’s a snippet from his post:
The ironic thing is you built your audience by writing what you wanted to write so in theory they should have no problem with the stuff you write, but yet I know some of us still fall into the trap of wondering if they will like what we put out or not.
That is indeed rather ironic. I built up a small audience for my blog by writing about what interested me; I was even accepted into the awesome blog network, 9Rules, based on what I was writing. Now that I have a decent little audience, I’ve crawled into my hole, worrying whether or not what I’m writing on my blog is interesting or not. That’s not only ironic, that’s just dumb. Furthermore, while I doubt I’m ever going to be a wonderful novelist or anything like that, one reason I started System 13 was to try and improve my writing ability. It’s rather difficult to improve one’s writing ability when you’ve stopped writing, isn’t it?
Now that I’ve sat down and wrote this out (both for the site and for me, truth be told), I know the answer, and what a simple answer it is: just write. Quit worrying so much and just write something – anything. The rest will follow. I need to look back through my archives and see what it was that was inspiring me to write when I started: books, sci-fi, history. Cliché or not, I need to get back to my blog ‘roots.’
Comments 7
Now that you’re up to date on BSG you can go back to watching SG-1 and complaining about the omnipresence of modern English.
Posted 07 Feb 2007 at 2:15 pm ¶Haha!
Good idea, Slone. I’d honestly forgotten about SG-1 when I got hooked on BSG.
Posted 07 Feb 2007 at 3:02 pm ¶It’ll come back when it’s right. I’ve ridden the “roller coaster” several times over the years, it comes in spurts. If it weren’t for my *somewhat* consistent Eager Beavers, my site would have been bare for quite some time.
I’m still going through it now, not quite the stage fright part, but the “not writing cause I’ve nothing to say” part. But yet, I have stuff to say, lots of it about a lot of things. Though when my fingers touch the keyboard the words don’t want to flow from my brain to my fingers. But I’m pretty sure that, sooner or later, they will. They better, else I’m paying hosting and domain fees for nothing! lol
I know that non of this is any real advice, I guess what I’m saying is that you’re not alone.
Posted 07 Feb 2007 at 5:46 pm ¶Jay: Actually, that is helpful, knowing I’m not alone in feeling.. well, silenced.
Posted 07 Feb 2007 at 8:01 pm ¶Josh, you’re REALLY not alone, trust me. One of the favourite posts I ever wrote was 9rules has eaten my content.
It took a while, but you do get it back. The advice “just write what you want” really is the best.
And good luck
Posted 08 Feb 2007 at 1:26 pm ¶Cas: I read that post back when you first wrote it, but I just reread it again in full. Great post. That’s honestly *exactly* how I feel. I’m happy with how my blog has progressed since I started it, but when I was actually accepted into 9Rules (!!!), I got slapped back a notch. I look at what a lot of the folks in the network do, and I feel like System 13 is severely lacking. Instead of grabbing the bull by the horns, I seem to have fallen into a hole, one which I’m having a hard time crawling out of.
Thanks for the advice, as well as the luck!
Posted 08 Feb 2007 at 4:19 pm ¶I haven’t felt any different from day one as a 9r member. I keep thinking it was a mistake.
I often think: I should post more, could I post this, what should I post instead, maybe I’ll wait… It’s insane.
So, I try not to look for answers to these questions. Just let it happen, outside of myself almost. And then, after a while, I look back at my output for the week or so and go: oh, that all came about rather naturally, didn’t it? How did I do that?
In the end, I’m even reasonably happy with the results. Go figure.
Posted 11 Feb 2007 at 3:49 am ¶Post a Comment