Sounds like I am going to talk about the mighty pen and all the massively thought provoking and artistic posts and articles about the web doesn’t it.
Well No! I am going to talk about me … Hey – I can do that, it’s my blog … Don’t like it Huh? Get yer own then … This is my patch! … Who needs visitors anyway … Right – That’s got rid of him…
I have decided for myself that writing is definitely an art.
Not that what I write is artistic in any mature sense of the word but it seems that the whole relationship between me and writing has changed over the years and now I am certain – ‘Writing is an Art’.
I never really found writing hard surprisingly until I came to do it as part of learning about Internet Marketing. It was only until then that the writing rabbit froze in the headlights of the writer’s block. It was only then that it took me an inordinate time to get anything done – 14 hours to write my first 400 word article and it was rubbish. You see – it only got bad when I started taking it seriously. I found I could write reams of ramblings on and on until it even bored an accountant. I used to write stories when I was at school, poetry even when the storm of teenage emotions arrived, lyrics and songs when I used to sing and play keyboards (badly).
So writing was not a stranger to me…
Later I could write wonderful technical reports on the assembled interrupts of any pretending to microprocess and everything informative and detailed. I always scored, at least when I had the time to do them properly, consistent high 90 percents in matters scientific and mathematical in my degree studies. The one thing that really took over me was when I had an idea about something, when I was creating something new or exploring something I still like to call the ‘conceptual landscape’ – that’s really just ideas and their connections to those more reality based than myself.
So why could I not write for Internet marketing? Why did I suddenly turn into a bumbling idiot and spend hours researching, rewriting, rehashing, restarting anything simple like a blue widget product description. For of course my site about blue widgets, that totally lacks any pages on blue widgets except for a few rambling attempts at writing how everyone must have a blue widget because they are great…
Why indeed…
Well – I don’t know?
Sorry – I really do not understand why that happened. Though I do know that I have wasted so much time on it. Seriously…
The only way I managed to beat it was to just write anything… Really, just to let go and let whatever come out… You can investigate the Internet for the most detailed and most interesting information about blue widgets, and research and listen to the experts and guru’s who will tell you how exactly to write about the blue widgets. You can read everyone elses work on bluw widgets. Go really deep and structured making up a database or spreadsheet of blue widgets, comparing them in all sorts of interesting ways. You can do all these things, all day long, to make sure you write the ideal and most search engine friendly piece of blue widget script that there ever was. But, if you were like me, you ended the day, with a head full of blue widget ideas, a disk full of blue widget data, but a site full of – well – it is horrible to think of it – a site full of another empty day, wasted, with nothing to show for it.
So time passes … You blue widget page gets lonely sinking lower and lower in the SERPs, getting no attention, no visitors, not even from a robot…
Each day passes, with good intention, to write about the blue widget, maybe sell some… and that horrible feeling at the end of the day gets a stranglehold on you after a while as you persist in the madness, the feeling of not achieving anything.
You keep doing this – and believe me I know – you will begin to feel a failure. After a while you will ‘know’ that you are a failure. Why? Because everyone else seems to be able to write about blue widgets so easily, without any problem, some within microseconds of turning their machine on apparently have posted blue widget posts to their blog, blue widget snippets to the social web, have got likes and clicks abounding from places where the blue widget doesn’t even shine. You realise you must be a failure, because you cannot even do that… Why are you even trying? Yes – I know the feeling so well.
My subsciousness I feel is getting squashed into the back of my mind throughout this process and saying ‘WTF? This is all wrong!!’. Well – I am not absolutely sure is my subsciousness would swear like that, just that I certainly would if I was my subsciousness! Something is very wrong when a singular act becomes the measure of a life, especially when it is when you measure yourself up to this…
But, let’s cheer you up after that sad person’s admission… Writing is an Art…
You remember the paintings you used to do in kindergarten?
No – I don’t either, but I see the wonderful beginnings of it with my own children, some of which are pinned up in my office. These drawings will never win any arts prizes, they are beautiful though in their imperfections, I see clever things in them, their ideas and thoughts made visual.
They may or may not be art to anyone else, but they were done, practised, created, time and time again. Each one, any amount of steps forward, or backwards in any measure of art but ‘they are art’.
It is the act of creation.
The act of making something, even if full of imperfections, but consistently – THAT IS ART.
Art is truly a Verb in this context. It is to be done.
Badly at first – as all art is, that is its nature.
To stop the art is to stop creation. To spend so much time getting it absolutely right first time, second time, any time, defeats the artistic process. It seems to be an incremental building of creativity. Something that is never quite right but once done – IS DONE. It just needs to be done!
This is the lesson that I found hard until very recently. It just NEEDS TO BE DONE.
Especially of course if your independence, health, comfort, happiness and other choice factors depend on your action.
ART NEEDS TO BE DONE – TO BE ART
So to writing. It is an art. It needs to be done. Doesn’t matter if it is absolute rubbish – sometimes people see the beauty in even that.
“Spring is sprung, The grass is riz, I wonder where the flowers is. The boid is on the wing — Absoid! Of course the wing is on the boid.” – Anon, New York, 1946
In trying to get it right sometimes you can waste so much time.
Just treat it like an art – and think of a child’s picture – it just needs to be done.
GO DO SOMETHING NOW – hopefully writing because if you came here for advice on blue widgets I am so sorry, they only had a walk on part in this plot and nothing of values exists here for any of blue widgetkind.
GO AND WRITE ANYTHING – ABOUT ANYTHING and switch off that most unkind of critics – self-analysis. Keep doing it and enjoy the freedom…
Believe me I have written some rubbish…
What do you mean ‘Including this’?!!!!
Some Interesting Reading if this didn’t help you:
- What Gets You Worked Up Enough To Blog About It? – Writing this weekly column for the Blog Herald has been a new challenge for me — I’m not used to blogging “on demand.†On my own blog, Publishing 2.0, I just waiting until something gets me sufficiently worked up that the blog post …
- How to Get Unstuck: Overcoming Writer’s Block – Break the Procrastination Habit Today. Does this ever happen to you? You sit down to write or create something and you end up doing everything but writing and creating. And then suddenly it’s the end of the day and you think “How did …
- When a blogging slump hits… | Randa Clay Design – What do you do when you hit a blogging dry spell? Have you ever felt like you just didn’t have any good ideas for posts anymore… what was once a deep well of.
- Academic Productivity » Book Review: How to write a lot (Paul Silvia) – This is a short book that one can read on a flight (I did), but it packs a lot of good advice. Silvia is sick of ‘self-help-like’ books on writers block, etc., and it shows. He writes from the point of view of a seasoned author, …
- 20 Surefire Ways To Beat Writer’s Block – Daphne Gray-Grant knows writing. As a Publications Coach she works with corporate writers who want to do their work faster and better. So we know she’s faced writer’s block. If you’re a blogger, a business owner, or a writer of any type …
Update: 12th December 2010
Now I did put this post forward on Reddit and Digg, in an effort to expose it a bit and in an effort to truly help anyone else who has suffered the mind-numbing inactivity that seems to come to the afflicted with doing any writing on the Internet. I got it real bad!!! But now know how exactly it is broken…
Anyway – I did really upset someone by having Optincrusher running on the blog with an opt in to a newsletter I was working on, so I took it down for a while. However, now I am bringing it back properly. I am hoping to interest those who really want to push their Internet marketing to the limits but have been stuck on ‘Guru Reliance’ for too long. These people are probably experts in the breadth of SEO and know so much more about it than any of the gurus of which they follow. I have finally worked out in principle what you have to do in these circumstances to win through and break out of all reliance on anyone but themselves… but I only want a certain kind of subscriber in my list, – those who agree in principle that once they are winning they go out and help others who desperately need this kind of help…
All sounds a bit odd in short … I will make a proper post about it…
But for now – please don’t get annoyed by an optin bar appearing on the page 🙂 It will have a purpose – and not one to cheat, annoy or anger anyone – honest…