30 January 2011

It's Not Writer's Block

I realize it's been about a year since I last posted. An eventful year it's been (but aren't they all). But it's not writer's block. It's more like writer's anxiety. Or writer's terror.

My problem with blogging is that I craft a piece of writing (literary value TBD), and then I just throw it out into the vast, anonymous interwebs. No control over how it will be received or interpreted. The context in which the ideas are created is utterly divorced from the context in which it is read. That's really not how I roll. I am a reader of atmosphere--how I interact with those around me is greatly dependent upon who is where and why. Without all those touch points, I'm lost.

Which me should I be when I blog? The me who loves South Park and the greatness of 90s rock? The me with a husband and a kid-and-a-half and a house to clean? The me who takes two hours to do her nails? The me who is a project management editor? Perhaps you can see not only my confusion but also the high likelihood that I will bore and confuse the reader. Cuz if I'm not writing a housekeeping blog, nobody wants to hear about my stain-laundering procedures. And at that point, my primary reason to write becomes something along the lines of "right now I'm really excited about myself I bet people will think I'm cool if I write about this like this!" Tedious.

This is an age-old dilemma: why should anyone listen to you? (Right now, for one person, I have the age-old response of "because I said so." We all know that won't last for long.) Traditionally compelling reasons include "because I am the expert" and "because I am awesome" (or something like that--Plato may have said it better).

So, expertise. . . . Well, my son, who is a "late-talker" but suddenly acquired a decent little vocabulary last month, suddenly decided yesterday he will only say "oh no!" in any and all circumstances. I could tell you all about that. (Just did, in fact. . . .) Expertise. . . . Ellipses are three conjoined points, which should not break over the end of a line, and the "fourth point" is really just a period; in quoted material, this period should be closed against the text if it's the end of the sentence and separated from the text by a character space if it's not the end of the quoted sentence. That's Chicago style, anyway. Hm . . . Don't let kids play with sharp things or drink bath water (good luck) or eat cotton balls. (At least that was useful.)

This blog will be big one day--I can feel it. Just gotta change this diaper first.

If anyone got to the end of this wondering why they bothered, just know that it's all Sara's fault.