Merlin Mann is the editor
and primary contributor for 43 Folders,
a small family of websites about personal productivity, “life hacks” and simple
ways to make your life a little better. I love to watch and listen to his witty
talks on YouTube. In Brian Bailey’s
book The Blogging Church (John Wiley
& Sons, Inc: 2007) here Merlin gives some encouragement words for bloggers,
especially new bloggers, to keep on writing, to “just get fingers in motion,
and fear not the crappy first draft.” He writes,
“The most exciting and difficult time for a new blogger
is the barn-raising period after the new blog is launched and the daily dash
for new and interesting content begins. As perhaps thousands of ostensible
bloggers discover – sometimes as early as their site’s inaugural week – this can
be surprisingly hard work.
It’s
hard not simply for the obvious reasons – that regularly scheduled writing (or
photography, or even linking) takes time, preparation, and care. You may also
have days where you have nothing to say and are tempted to meta-whine about how
you have nothing to say. You may find yourself padding pages with the results
of online personality tests or the latest funny-once meme du jour. Resist this
with extreme prejudice.
Remember
that your blog is only incidentally a publishing system or a public website. At its heart, your blog represents the
evolving expression of your most passionately held ideas. It’s a conversation
you’re holding up with the world and with yourself – a place where you can
watch your own thoughts take different shapes and occasionally surprise you
with where they end up.
By focusing
on the themes that interest and inspire you most (to the exclusion of topics
that are simply fashionable or widely held), your creativity will be re-stoked
and your writing will become a more accurate artifact of the way your mind and
your heart want to operate. Accept that the process of writing is also the
process of thinking and of realizing what really matters to you.
A lot
of people say writer’s block is your
brain’s way of letting you know it needs the help of your hand – so just
get fingers in motion, and fear not the crappy first draft. Bad days pass, and
as long as you’re writing as honestly and with as much focus as you can muster,
the process will seem less foreign and painful every day.”
As a blogger myself, I know that encouragements above
are true.
I hope this words will encourage you to start blogging
(or to write blog again)
THINK BIG.
START SMALL. GO DEEP.
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