What to write

October 8, 2007 · Filed Under general

Deciding what to write can be a pain. I know I want to write. I even have lots of ideas about what to write during times of the day (and night) when I can’t write. Then, when the time & opportunity come to write, I seize up.

I want to be significant, or at the very least write stuff that’s perceived as significant. I want to be profound. I want to be entertaining. I want my blog to be visited & read. Ego & pride can be like that.

Unfortunately, I’ve also read quite a few “best practices” “how-to-build-a-ginormous-blog-readership” postings. Quite frankly, I’m not all that interested in being that disciplined.

While I’m not wanting to go and open up a vein, in terms of writing a full-disclosure, no-holds-barred blog, I do think it would be inadvisable, if not impossible, for me to try and wring my personality completely out of what I write & post, just so I can hit an arbitrary “marketing” target.

In some ways, the recent blog-pruning that I did wasn’t the best thing for me to do. I deleted a whole bunch of posts, which, while needing to be done, has resulted in my becoming a little too circumspect when I go to write new posts. I’m starting to run everything I write through a filter of “Gee… will I just be deleting this in a year or three? Maybe I just should cut out the middleman & not post it…” It doesn’t make that much sense, I know, but it can be how my mind works at times.

In line with that is being overly aware of who my “target audience” is/might/should be. Sometimes I think I should take greater care in appealing to some mythical “larger” audience out there. Other times I think I should just write for myself & possibly bigsis. And then there are always the thoughts about what happens if the “wrong” folks read the “wrong” thing, and I end up getting some hassle for something that I’ve written (e.g., about church, work, etc…).

In the end, I think that I’m just going to try to (once again) stay loose enough to write what I think, and write it well. I’m not writing the “Great American Novel” here, writing some great treatise of deep theological significance, or even writing something that has humor and/or redeeming value. I’m just writing my thoughts, and hopefully doing so in a well-crafted & cogent manner.

If I’m doing this just to be “liked” and/or “popular”, then maybe I should stop. It’s not worth it, because it’s not all that likely to yield such a result. If I’m doing it to be informative, at least in a “newsy” way, then I should probably stop as well. I’ve got a much better chance at being informative in a “this is what my take on this is” type of way. I’m neither a newsmaker, nor a newsbreaker. I do, however, have opinions (snarky and serious) about news that others make & break.

I don’t want to be a stereotypical “navel-gazing” blogger, but I’ve got to stop worrying so much about it. Such worry has no point. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? Everyone stops reading? I would hope that my ego wouldn’t be that fragile.

-ghp

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Tags: blogging, feelings, personality, writing