Liz Strauss, that amazing lady of Successful Blog, recently asked a question of her readers as to How Do You Balance the Insecurity and Confidence to Write on the Internet? And of course I had to be driving by when the title caught my eye and I got to thinking about that very question and how it applied to my latest conundrum with my own effort here. Did I let the blogger in me get out of balance?
Well obviously. Otherwise I wouldn’t be experiencing a conundrum now would I? But is it insecurity in my writing that’s causing the problem here? I had to look into this and what I saw surprised me just a bit. Where blogging is concerned, I found that I’m not insecure about writing. In fact, as I dug down deeper, I realized I never was. Go figure.
You see, I never had a problem with idea that I’d be publishing my ideas, thoughts and meanderings for all the world to see (and comment upon) when I first thought of joining the Blogosphere. It was an exciting thought to be truthful about it and besides…I knew who I was so I figured I didn’t have to try and fool anybody with some false persona, not that I ever could. For some reason, I find I can’t be anyone but me. And that seemed to be one of the great things about blogging; I could be myself. A unique among the unique.
The problem, I found out, is not insecurity so much as frustration. Frustration with my limitations. My mind, the amazing thing that it is, is constantly coming up with all these wonderful subjects and prose and concepts one right after another and if that was all I needed to run my blog then my Adsense earnings would be a heck of lot higher than they are now. The problem here is that the rest of me is stupid. I have stupid fingers that refuse to get the hang of touch typing so by the time I’ve typed out the first paragraph of a post, my mind has already come up with a half a dozen more, became extremely exasperated with my lack of output and went off for a couple beers somewhere leaving me to wallow in a fugue of forgetfulness.
I’m an inline spell checker’s nightmare with two fingers and the worst part about it is I’m a absolutely obsessed with correct spelling. If there’s one thing that turns a great piece of content right on it’s ear (IMHO), it’s misspellings. I remember reading an excerpt once from Stephen King’s On Writing that you should never use an inline spell checker while writing since all it does is distract you from the job at hand. You’re job is to write! Not chase little red snakes all over the word processor. Once a section is finished, then you can run a spell checker over the thing. Unfortunately, I’ve never seemed to master the ability to ignore that little red line from hell that resides under words such as jist, gaurd, or cumudgeon nor have I ever managed to turn the inline spell checker off…on purpose that is.
Punctuation is another shortfall of mine. If it ain’t a period, comma, question mark or exclamation point, I’m lost. Simple as that. I suppose I could go and take a quick course on what punctuation actually is and how to properly apply it within a paragraph but that would take time away from my writing.
It’s the Catch 22 of blogging. I can’t take time off from blogging to learn how to write, can’t people understand this?
Hmmm.
I guess I just proved Liz’s point, huh?
Okay, so I’m out of balance, I admit it. I refuse to publish something that looks like some poor mind blown ex-air traffic controller partially wrote during a period of momentary lucidity. It could very well be that I’m making the classic mistake of scrutinizing myself a little too closely these days instead of going with the flow of the thing. It could very well be that I’ve picked myself completely apart a half hour before I even start is more like it so the obvious solution here is to…
Knock it right the hell off! Scrutinizing that is.
Don’t you think?
So here’s to you Liz, you did it again. Whether I like it or not, you made me take a long look at myself and instead of the easy going blogging lad that I once was, I found an uptight, stressed out hard case that let life past and present get to him. Of course finding a way to balance things out again is going to be a whole new adventure in itself.
I suppose I’ll have to blog about it.
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Tags: Blogging, blogging pains, Liz Strauss, the blog, writing
April 8th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Hey Kirk,
If it gets you back to picking on me and wheel chair races I’m all for that!
I mean, I was just thinkin’
April 9th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Hi Liz,
And when you think, things happen. Thanks Liz.
I’m working on it, Liz. And I’ll be starting the Spring overhaul on the wheelchair this weekend. You won’t stand a chance this year (I still think installing oversize bearings on yours last year was cheating).
By the way, you looked great at WordCamp Dallas.