Put your blog where your mouth is – or stop talking about it and just blog already…

I follow Seth Godin’s Blog and sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don’t, but I couldn’t really argue much with his recent post on Talker’s block. The basic premise of the article is captured in the first two sentences:

No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down.

Seth maintains that because talking all the time is a habit and a regular occurrence, so we get good at it through all that practice, and we also don’t worry so much about it coming back to haunt us. So he says the cure for writer’s block is to practice-practice-practice and aim at being better, not being perfect:

Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better.

As fate would have it (maybe there is a muse afterall??), I also happen to be reading Roger Ebert’s book, Life Itself. I highlighted a phrase from the book where Roger receives some writing advice in the beginning of his career as a reporter:

One, don’t wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end.

I have been thinking about coming back to this blog for quite a while now, and have also thought up a couple of good post ideas, but never managed to actually do anything with all that great thinking. It amazes me how often what I need to get going again, on whatever it is I’m procrastinating about at the moment, is often SHOUTING at me if I only open my eyes and ears and pay attention. Clearly, the message I needed to hear was ‘just shut-up and write in your blog already.” So, here I am back in the saddle writing and trying to do my best to suck less.

For those of you willing to go along for the ride – in the immortal words of Bette Davis, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!”

image courtesy of Aura983 via Creative Commons.