Blogger's block

You've heard of writer's block - now meet blogger's block.

The only cure for the former is to just get writing. There's nothing worse than sitting here staring at a blank sheet of paper or its modern equivalent, the empty white screen. Writing anything, even if it's complete bollocks,* is better than writing nothing and once you've got the bollocks out of your system there's a fair chance you'll find the writer's equivalent of your sea legs again.

Blogger's block is similar but, at least in my case, with a bit of added complexity thrown in. I've been working flat out all week, mostly writing for other people, which means when it came to writing for me, there wasn't much left. Inspiration, like Elvis Presley, had left the building. I've been incredibly busy on a major ghostwriting job this week, which has pretty much drained me. Add in juggling several new job offers, which involved lengthy telephone discussions and/or poring over freelance contracts plus vast quantities of email - not only did all that leave me too knackered to write but on the rare occasions that fleeting inspiration struck, when I had free time I'd discover I'd forgotten precisely what it was what that I'd decided, several hours earlier, to blog about.

Even yesterday's blog was a struggle and that after borrowing Dougalfish's idea! I'm sure you don't want to know it took me the best part of 90 minutes and two pints of tea to reconstruct that day.

Here I sit on a Friday evening, too exhausted to watch Wednesday's recording of Torchwood, sipping my third glass of Merlot. I didn't feel like blogging at all, but once in a week is a poor show. Hence my heroic effort tonight to explain why blogging can just be too damn difficult at times.

I'm looking forward to a lighter workload next week, including the opportunity to hang out at an unconference for online journalism. Who knows, it might even give me something to blog about!

* pardon my French