Where have the words gone?
It’s something that happens to everyone from time to time…feeling completely unmotivated to write. The words aren’t there any more. There is only a blank screen. The blog feels uninspiring. Every time you sit down to write, nothing comes out. This, in turn, makes you not want to switch on the laptop. And then you just stop looking at the blog, or the piles of products you need to photograph, or the stats and how they are on a downward trend. And then you feel like a fraud, someone who cannot claim to be a blogger, and this makes you not switch on the laptop even more. I think you get the gist.
I’ve drawn a blank for a few weeks now. In fact, a bit longer than that. And there really is no solution for it. I won’t say that a walk or brainstorm for ideas or a flick through a magazine help, because they didn’t help me. What has helped is to not beat myself up about not writing, to realise that there are times when you I to take a break from something I love, and to try and figure out why it may have happened in the first place. It’s taken me this long to work out why it happened, and that realisation is what has gotten the writing juices going again. No more blank screen.
It all stems from the terrible habit of comparing myself against others; I compare myself against other bloggers, feeling that they are much better than me, that they are true bloggers and that I am just some sort of fraud; and in comparing myself I lost sight of why I blog. I also lost sight of the fact that I have readers and subscribers and followers. All these people think I am a blogger, and isn’t that what is important, and not what I think I am and am not when compared to other bloggers?
This little nugget is what has helped me to get back on track, get writing again, get planning again, and get inspired again to write. It’s for you, my readers, and for me too because I love it. Who cares what I think other bloggers think. Because they probably don’t think it. It’s all inside my head, and is completely unhelpful to me.
“Comparison is the death of joy”
– Mark Twain