Being a blogger, my urge is to write! Sometimes, I know how the post should end but haven’t a clue how to get there from the start. It’s a bit like someone filling in all the edges of a jigsaw then telling you to finish it off but throwing the picture on the front of the jigsaw box in the bin. So you end up piecing things together blind. A poster over at Sphinn, baiduyou, summed it up perfectly for me, he said that blogging, in a particular reference to myself was like that old Eric Morecambe joke while he was playing the piano “I’m playing all the right notes”, Eric use to say while playing the paino (badly), “just not in the correct order”!
So, how do you get into a scenario, where you have an end but no start and never even thought about an adjoining middle bit. I guess it is most likely down to inspiration, timing and environment. Like recently, I ran a post for a client and I was just about to hit the publish button when I was sent a webpage through StumbleUpon which I drew inspiration from and turned a semi-interesting blog post that I was just about to publish into a hidden sub-level imagery written piece. I guess you could call that inspiration and timing.
Being a blogger also requires a deeper insight into the environment your writing about. Sometimes that deeper understanding comes from unusual places. In a recent conversation with one of the best up-and-coming blog writers coming out of Scotland I found out that this person was most creative when he was hungover. Now, I know there is a void between creativity and understanding but to be honest to make a written piece come alive it requires energy – and if that energy comes when your mind is at its most diluted – then so be it.
There is a reason why white papers on a subject are termed as such, there lifeless, bland, flavourless written pieces written for education purposes only … so fail in any emotional connection with the reader. Blog posts are more personal, informative and, if written correctly, inspire debate and communication between the writer and the reader.
There is nothing worse than reading a blog that uninspires, is frightened to show emotion or is so structured in its posts that you wonder WHY they are blogging in the first place. Corporate or starched company blogs are the worst – they are so disengaging its almost as if they go out of their way to write information without character or feeling. Give me a blog anyday where the person writing is allowed to breathe life into their posts – no matter if the end result should never have been started in the first place. Its the Eric Morecambe philsophy and it’s what made him a great character and indivudual.
