Speaking Volumes

My dad does NOT do computers, he doesn’t like them, he doesn’t use them in his free time, and he doesn’t care to learn to. Having said that, to my great surprise he actually goes online once in while and reads this blog. (Hi Dad!)

Last Sunday morning I meet my parents out for coffee and my dad turned to me and said, “Was that your blog on Friday? The one about the butterflies?” Well it was, so I replied yes. Next he says, “Was that reeeally your best effort??”

HA! No. The answer was no. That was SO not my best effort. But I gotta let you non-bloggers out there in on a little secret. It’s not so easy coming up with something to blog about every week. Now sometimes something interesting has happened, or I’m reading something great and then the writing just flows out. But, often times I turn to Su on Friday and say, “um, I can’t think of anything to write about…”

So now I feel like I have to redeem myself. Make up for my semi-pathetic attempt at a blog from last Friday. But, I think I have blogger’s block.

In searching ‘writer’s block’ online I came up with a ton of results…but most interesting was the “cures” that I found. Here’s a short list of some of the suggestions I came across:

Talk to a monkey - Explain what you’re really trying to say to a stuffed animal or cardboard cutout.  

Write from a persona - Lend your voice to a writing personality who isn’t you. Doesn’t have to be a pirate or anything—just try seeing your topic from someone else’s perspective, style, and interest.

Get away from the computer; Write someplace new - If you’ve been staring at the screen and nothing is happening, walk away. Take one pen and one notebook, and go somewhere new.

Listen to new music - Try something instrumental and rhythmic that you’ve never heard before. Put it on repeat.

Make a pointless rule - You can’t end sentences with words that begin with a vowel. Or you can’t have more than one word over eight letters in any paragraph. Limits create focus and change your perspective.

Work on the title - Quickly make up five distinctly different titles. Meditate on them. What bugs you about the one you like least?

Write five words - Literally. Put five random words on a piece of paper. Write five more words. Try a sentence. Could be about anything. A block ends when you start making words on a page.

Lastly, write about having writer's block.

Ok, so I made the first step. I wrote about having writer’s block. Maybe next week I’ll be completely entertaining. And, maybe not…you’ll have to read and see.