It’s funny, since I returned to blogging I keep kicking around ideas for the sort of blog posts that I used to write, way back when. There’s something kicking around my head on sexism and another about UKIP and the upcoming European election that keep buzzing around my brain every now and again, and I think they could be quite good.
I used to love writing about big topics, and was told on more than one occasion (ok twice) that I was quite good at these kind of blog posts. But now, when I sit down to try and write one, they just don’t seem to form themselves, and I retreat back into the kind of ‘dear diary’ biffle that you are reading now. (Sorry about that.
I wonder if this is a hangover from my days with Demon Pigeon, where my style was very much more ‘worn down sarcasm peddler.’ Writing for that site I had to challenge myself on everything that I wrote, to see if I was really adding anything to the discussion or coming up with a different angle on it, or whether I could be sufficiently funny about it. Some of our readers could say that I should have done a better job at challenging myself on some of those questions, but that’s a different matter.
Because it had a bigger audience (and one I was largely not personally responsible for bringing to the table) I was eternally terrified of being scoffed at for being naïve or overly enthusiastic, or (heaven forfend) being on the wrong side of the argument. That’s why I stopped with the regular blogging in the first place. It was too difficult trying to hold two contrary personality types online at the same time.
So now when I come to write the sort of things that I like to write about for a completely different and largely new audience (hello new followers!) I find myself frozen by that same nagging question as to whether anyone really cares what I think, and more often than not it stops me before I can commit a single word to paper.
Writing for Demon Pigeon helped to make me a much better writer, but I think it also made me quite insecure about my writing as well. This isn’t a plea for you to tell me you like my writing by the way, but rather an admission that I struggle, as I suppose every writer does, with that question of self-worth. I need to get past it if I want to go back to being a proper blogger. Let’s see if next week brings any more joy.
