Facilitating Paradox

Did you ever worry that you might run out of ideas to write about? Have you ever faced writer’s block? Blogger’s block? What to write about??

I’ve written about this before, and realized that writing about not knowing what to say is still writing. I used to journal a lot more than I do these days, and I always used to have something to say, something to write about, something to comment on. Why should that be any different today, when my life is so much richer in so many ways? Yet we bloggers (at least some of us) feel obliged to write something significant, something dripping with deep meaning. Why?

Why should bloggers feel they have to meet a higher standard just because they’re publishing to the world? (Or at least to the online world...) Perhaps we feel we have live up to our credentials, our scholarly standards? What if we’re not seminary or graduate educated? Or why not share and speak about those parts of our humanity that we share with everyone else, regardless of education? I know our education imprints a prevalent filter upon all our experience, one that’s hard to get around.

Still, why shouldn’t we speak what we feel and write what we think? I value visceral blogs precisely because they help to bring me back to basics, grounding or centering me, getting me out of my head. Such instinctual or spontaneous writing can be fresh and inspiring or may just be jarring us back to our senses.

And, perhaps, by writing extemporaneously we can affect or change our mood, our mental routine, drawing us out of a slump or a rut. It might show us that we actually do have something to say. It might very well convince us that the only way around writer’s or blogger’s block is straight through it. Write about the blockage.

That’s enough writing for now.

...

Update: Apparently Garry Trudeau sympathizes. The "throw away" panels from today's Doonesbury strip have a journalist sitting down to blog, saying "I got nothin'" then "I suppose I better go with it anyway."