On Reflections on My Writing

Of late, I’ve felt that writing has been like trying to pound blood from a stone.

A strange metaphor, that.

Obviously, I can write. I wrote some articles for work today. One presented a major challenge; I just couldn’t find anything to say. One flowed quite well, and it was done in ten minutes. Yesterday, I wrote some good text. Wednesday, I wrote an article that referenced The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash. (Yes, it was relevant; it’s a little-known fact that Senator Al Franken plays a bouncer in a scene late in the film.)

I’ve also been writing some other stuff. Fiction stuff.

So it’s not that I can’t write. Because I am.

So why does it feel like I can’t? Why do the words feel dull? Uninspired? Lacking in life, vitality, interest?

I wrote six Batman haikus yesterday, for crying in the mud. One or two even have some nice turns of phrase.

It’s a curious thing, that.

A momentary lull, I suppose. A feeling of a lack of accomplishment, perhaps. Or a crisis of confidence, which I’m sometimes prone to suffer.

It is, more likely than not, the latter.

There’s a “tell.” I’m feeling, quite strongly, the itch. The itch to redesign the website, that is.

There’s absolutely no reason to redesign the website. I’ve put a lot of work in, under the hood, to get things the way I want with the current theme I’m using. A redesign means scrapping all of that work, for absolutely no reason whatsoever and for absolutely no gain, because changing the look around affects absolutely no one buy myself and doesn’t bring with it more readers.

But this is me, being logical. These are logical, sane, rational reasons for leaving things with the status quo.

The itch doesn’t come from a logical place.

You see, I will feel productive, digging deep into CSS and PHP code, when in reality I’m merely wasting time and spinning wheels. There’s no reason for any of it.

I’ll ignore the itch. And it will pass. And the feeling that my words aren’t measuring up, that too will pass.

Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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