Overcoming Blogger's Block

Day 29 of Blogging from A to Z is a Sunday and according to the rules it’s a day off. 

Tomorrow is Monday and the challenge ends with Z.  I’m pondering it.

I discovered blogging in 2007 when I, along with 400 other people, was laid off from Saks.  “Hey, I write every day in my journal, how hard can it be?”  I smugly thought until blogger’s block reared its ugly head.  Truth is, it is not as easy as I thought it would be, and not everything I write in my journal has in place in a public forum (amazing that some people don’t understand that).  And in the years since I began, I found it hard to post my blog on a regular basis.

But I realized something about myself.  I’m deadline driven, and I keep my word.  So I signed up January 1, 2012 to take the 365 day (plus 1 for leap year) blogging challenge.  In order to keep that commitment, I must post a blog by or before midnight each day.  I’ve posted a few only minutes before.  Right now as I type, it is 11pm and the minutes race ahead of me.

In April, I took the Blogging from A to Z challenge.  I figured, I’m committed to posting a blog a day anyway, let’s add a month with the alphabet as a prompt.  It’s working.

I may need to find a new series of prompts for the next 9 months of the year.

 Writing is like any discipline.  The more you do it the more you can do it.

 I’ve taken one page from a friend who used to work for a newspaper.  She had to write stories on demand on a daily basis.  There is no time to think, rethink or overthink.  You must simply make a decision, throw a rough draft on the page, hammer it out until it takes shape and get it done then move on to the next one.

I’ve taken another page from an on-line friend who said ‘give yourself permission to be mildly creative’.  That permission freed me to crank out the words.  Some will be true gems and that’s great, but some will be only mildly creative and that’s okay.

© Perle Champion