My hindbrain was thinking last night while I slept. And I had this thought: What if.. What if all these fears I have about writing aren’t really what I’m afraid of?

I have a two-frame comic strip in my head about my fear, the bad guy. In the first, skinny me (in my head) is yelling at the cops and pointing down the hall, “HE went that way. He went that way. He has a gun!!” In the next frame, the cops have gone and skinny me is sitting down to play cards with HIM, the gun-carrying guy. The gun is rubber and sitting on the table. The two of us are laughing.

That’s really as far as I got. Interesting, huh.

Meredith

What if whatever I say is useless, and unentertaining, and nobody reads it?

How can I come up with a witty lesson every day?

What if I don’t have an entertaining little voice that gives me the cute “come-hither” wink?

What if I hate what I write?

The last one is the closest to the event horizon of a black hole (that’s where time stops and the world goes on without you if you didn’t ever watch Andromeda).

I do want to be of service to my readers. I do love to write. Yes, I am taking your class.

Hope this helps.

Meredith

Instead of saying “suck it up and deal” I’ll just point out that there are lots of really smart programmers, companies, forums, search engines, and bloggers out there whose mission is to help you.

Nathan Bowerss last blog post..Another broken modal dialog

Oh so tired here after working all evening …. not sure how articulate I’ll be — which leads me to one of my concerns about blogging: I write like I talk, I don’t feel that I’m particularly good @ writing so what if I blog & don’t sound all shiny, wise & amazing ?

I also wonder if there is a particular etiquette that goes along with blogging ? You know … like a list of “do’s & dont’s”

On the technical side – I wonder what’s involved e.g. would I need my web designer to get a blog kicked off ? He made a place for it on my site, and, I have no idea what to do to activate it ??

On the upside … I love the idea of interacting with folks in the way of a blog; like you, I have many ideas for topics.

I look forward to following this topic w/you.

Linda

Lindas last blog post..Transformative Power of Illness

It is great to read your blog about blogging! I just started my blog a couple of weeks ago, and I am loving AND it gives me trouble!

I love it, because I love to write and I have so much more to tell! I am running around with my notes book, collecting ideas for blogs, writing them everywhere, formulating them in my head… :-)

The process of HOW and WHEN I post a blog, like when I feel ready for it, mirrows quite well my own development. I recognized my blogs are about tranformation :-) and probably the process of getting out there is also a process and mirrows some of my patterns. Patterns that become more obvious and clear now.

For instance: In fact, I am blogging, but still holding back so much. So how much openess and closeness is appropiate? Where are the borders? Intersting stuff. This is also true in my daily life, how much openess, how much “not telling” is sometimes? Is it a WISE choice, or a choice out of fear?

So keep on examing the stuff people have with blogs, it is so so interesting! When I see my patterns clearly, and they don’t jump on me from behind, I can DO something with them, which is pretty cool and relaxing.

Love, Sandra

Sandras last blog post..The two frogs

And yes, that would be a pretty ridiculously cool side effect if through this thing I got a bunch (or even a couple) new and awesome blogs to read and be a fan of.

@Jennifer – Wow. Yuck. What a miserable experience!

No wonder you don’t feel up to it … you deserve some yummy recovery time so that when you get back to blogging it up, it will be something that supports you and not some annoying, impractical should.

Taking your very practical, thoughtful what-if into consideration! This is a huge help – thanks!

The exposure I got blogging for b5Media rocked – and it almost ate me alive. My business suffered (not to mention my life) while I cranked out 200-300 words per day, 6 days a week. And the 25,000 hits I got monthly? I have squat to show for it. No new clients, no new subscribers, nada. Except exhaustion.

I think I’m still bitter that I got chewed up and spit out for a measly $75 a month. I’m so friggin’ glad I left.

And yet I still hear that gnawing voice in my head at least twice a week saying, “Huh! That’s brilliant. I should blog about it.” And, of course, I don’t. Because I’m blog-free and still recovering.

So my “what if” is a practical one: what if I go to all the trouble to start up a blog of my own (because those are the only terms I’d consider knowing what I know now), and I still don’t get any clients from it? How do I go from web 1.0 (website and e-newsletter) to web 2.0 – and actually make money at it?

Cuz blogging can be fun, sure, but being a leeetle start-up means everything has to have a return on time invested.

Maybe this is “Blog Like a Sailor School”?