What do you do, hotshot? What do you do?
You’ve been tasked with completing a blog entry every work day. But sometimes you just don’t have anything worthwhile to write about. Fortunately I have some experience in this area. On the air there are times when I just can’t come up with anything interesting to talk about. When this happens, I’ll just mention the first thing that springs to mind and go from there. If I can make it thirty seconds, fine. A minute, good. Two minutes, great. More than two minutes and I’m venturing into Crazy Bob territory. But I digress.
It’s the same with my podcast. I don’t like to plan these things out to the third decimal point. I think it’s a lot more interesting for me and for you if I just go in there, press record, and shoot from the hip. As a result there are times with I founder… which you know if you’ve ever listened. But that’s part of the whole experience.
When it comes to writing it’s the same sort of thing. For example, right now. It’s just about a quarter after noon as I began this, and most days I try to leave work at around noon. If that sounds early, keep in mind that most days I get here between 4:15 and 4:30 AM. I often think of the song “25 or 6 to 4” by Chicago. If you’re unfamiliar, that song was written by Chicago keyboardist Robert Lamm. It was around 3:35AM, or 25 or 26 minutes to 4. He was trying to write a song, but couldn’t think of anything. So he wrote a song about trying to write a song. When I struggle in this area, I try to take that struggle and use it as creative fodder. A blog post about trying to come up with a topic for my blog post? Why not!
As a young writer I was given the following piece of advice: when you’re experiencing writer’s block, the only way out of it is to write your way out. I took that to heart. If you’re writing about having trouble writing, at least you’re writing something, which is a lot more productive than staring at the ceiling waiting for inspiration. Inspiration, I have found, is like baking cookies; if you watch them they’ll never be done, and if you wait for inspiration it won’t show up. It’ll be off having fun with the person who, rather than waiting for it, went and sought it out. Wow, what a tormented metaphor. But I think you get the idea.
So far I’ve managed to squeeze over 400 words out of a basically vacant premise, which I think is quite an accomplishment. So with that I’m going to wrap it up, take a walk and then later on kick off the weekend with a beer or two.
Cheers, you crazy mofos!
