It was just here - insistent, engorged and impossible to ignore. Why, just a couple of weeks ago it convinced me to post a rambling, self-congratulatory love letter to my first year of blogging. Shortly after I did so, it boarded an airliner for parts unknown, leaving me bereft of any great themes to explore, while a blinking cursor mocks me from the top of a blank white screen. What’s up with that? I thought writing was supposed to get easier with practice, not harder. But just as I got into a groove, something in my brain changed gears and I find myself idling in neutral, staring at the molecules that make up my news unit’s windshield and wondering if I’ll ever correctly blog again. Okay, so I’m mixing metaphors but what do you expect when you sit down to write about writer’s block? Well-groomed sentences brimming with insight and coherency? Next blog over, please...Part of it is The Job. While chasing news can be an exhilarating kick in the press-pass, it can also be a synapses-stifling exercise in hurry up and wait. Couple that with the manufactured frenzy of a ratings period and the thankless nature of playing caddy to the regionally famous and you have a gig that can leave you numb and grumbling just as often as it renders you energized and inspired. On that, I COULD write a book. Lately I’ve been yanked away from my solo gig and partnered with a revolving cast of on-air correspondents. Together we’ve toiled daily on stories that have led their respective newscasts but haven’t exactly enthralled me to the point of on-line examination. If you feel cheated, don’t. Explicit details of eight hour phone tag sessions and minute-by-minute dissections of parking lot stake-outs don’t always make for entertaining fare, no matter how much lyrical mojo I’m packin’ - which lately, ain’t much.
But, as I’ve learned over the past year, lack of fodder is just one peril of push-button publishing. For ever night that I rush past the wife and kids to upload images and ideas into my laptop, there will be days (nay, weeks!) like this, when I’m forced to fill paragraphs with calorie-free filler, in hopes that my nine and a half regular readers won’t forsake visiting my site for the pet-photo spreads available elsewhere. Why that matters so much to me is less than a point of pride, but once a struggling writer like myself has gotten a taste of being read, well it also makes up for never having been published. So if you count yourself a regular visitor of this humble blog, do me a favor and don’t be a stranger. The output may fluctuate, the quality may vary, the pictures may grow fuzzy and rare...but rest assured that when I’m not sequestered in my upstairs lair with a burning case of keyboard diarrhea, I’m off somewhere staring into space, wondering what I can write about next and trying not to think about why I insist on doing so in the first place.
Next time: Actual content…I promise!
8 comments:
I swear everytime I read your vocabulary, I shudder at the thought of how I actually passed English with A's.
We all feel stunted from time to time. Ain't no thang! If it's any consolation, that was the most well written opus on writers block I've ever read.
OH MY GOD! I thought I was the only one with that problem! I have spent the last two days attempting to create something for my little blog and so far I have write my version of War and Peace (in length) and haven't said a damn thing! So in my attempt to cull it into something worth reading, I have decided to add pictures! (And you thing YOU have it tough!)
Hey, the block happens.
Dude!
You are more than just a guy with a camera on your shoulder!
Prove to the world you have more depth!
You're allowed to actually admit you have other facets of life. Help prove to the world working photogs can really lead a full life and it doesn't end or begin when you shoulder the lens, edit a story or raise the mast!
Only nine and a half regular readers? I don't believe that for a minute!
Don't feel bad, dude. You just wrote more about not being able to write than I've written in weeks. You're my hero! :)
Thanks all for the comments. I almost deleted this post before blogging because it felt so whiny, but I was desperate to post SOME-thing.
In an effort to flesh out this blog on slower news days, I do plan to explore other subjects, hopefully without dilluting this site's primary mission - whatever that is. As for my Navy days, Pat, that period of time was painful, obscene and, as you know, rife with silly anecdotes. I'll try and pick one I feel comfortable sharing, before moving into the really humiliating stuff.
Thanks to all for dragging your eyeballs across the letters I so carefully arranged. It means alot...
Take a short break from the blog might help. Hell, you're in sweeps, and you have enough stuff coming at you. Take two days off from the blog, them if nothing else; you could write about how much you missed it!
As for me, I think I may start a Lenslinger Fan Club site.
Hey, it looks like I'm the half reader, or at least the half commenter.
Stew, you once told me that you would hang on my every word when I wrote about the block. Well, I'm hanging with you no matter what you write. Blogging is journaling. Writing about the block is what you should do in a journal. It will kick start new ideas as well as keeping the words flowing. Mastered this test you have done young Jedi. O.K. that was corny. Oh great I punch lined myself. I need to leave this up to the pro. In other words, you.
The Colonel
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