If you’ve been following this blog… wait, who am I kidding, no one follows this blog. If anyone was actually following this blog and you were that hypothetical person, you would know that I’ve been in a major productivity slump lately. My writing isn’t so much blocked as it’s embedded in concrete. Every time I sit down to write and manage to think of something to write about, my first conclusion is either “That’s not something I want to share with the world,” or “No one in the world would be the least bit interested in that.”
I noticed awhile back that the word “I” shows up a lot in my posts. And I guess I concluded that was a bad thing. I decided I was going to write more about ideas and causes and art and all that important stuff. But then I came to the conclusion that I didn’t really know enough about any of those things for anyone to care what I had to say. After all, no graduate degrees here. I guess that’s the perfect recipe for concrete.
I kept telling myself I wanted to write, and I’ve actually started writing some posts about graphic design and WordPress development over at RobertCKeller.com. And that is going a little better because I can remove my self from the subject a little more. It’s just stating facts. At first I was a little worried that it was a big stretch to call myself a WordPress developer and that I wasn’t really knowledgable enough to write about it, but I’m more comfortable about where I stand in that world and that there are niches there for all sorts of levels of technical mastery. I think there’s a value in writing about my experiences in that realm and I’ve also found that I’ve discovered some things that were new to even topflight developers.
But I still can’t seem to get off the dime on this site. So here’s what I’m doing about it. This is a trick that I ran across in my reading about writing and writer’s block. Schedule a specific time to write and sit down at your writing place. You don’t have to write, but you can’t do anything else. This is my second attempt at this trick. The first was yesterday when I wrote in my design blog.
Another article that inspired me was Good Design is About Process, not Product by Jared Sinclair. The part about separating the creative and execution parts of the process really struck a chord. He suggests that you schedule time for creativity, where you are open to ideas, not worried about product but just quantity and iteration of ideas. He suggests that 90 minutes is a good chunk of time. Any more and I might just drift away.
My plan is to schedule 90 minutes of creative time between 10:30 and noon, as close to daily as possible. This isn’t just for writing. It might be for working on art projects, or brainstorming about design problems or some creative expression that I haven’t even thought about yet.
I hope that in the near future there will be much more frequent posts to HorizontalAmbition.com. Since I’m not going to burden myself with worrying about whether I have anything to offer, or if anyone gives a flying f**k about what I have to say, I hope that y’all find this to be a good thing.
Bob- This is a good thing. Good luck!
I follow your blog, Bob! You have been slacking lately but that’s OK. Maybe you could write about the changing times. Or how peoples perceptions of once “Taboo” topics are no longer taboo. Or how popular norms like, let’s say “The Christmas Village” during Holidazzle, is being marginalized to “Holiday Village” to either increase sales of promo items or to enforce political correctness….Another topic I have recently become re-engaged with is Cognitive dissonance, I wonder how many of today’s current events and social/political agendas could be broke down on this topic alone? Zak