Being creative

In his book On Writing, Stephen King talks about the necessity of sitting down every day and devoting time to writing, whether or not you "feel" like it. This is a piece of advice that often comes to mind when I'm in the tall grass and don't feel like I can string two coherent sentences together.

I had an interesting conversation with my sister Deb a few months ago about how much writing feels like work sometimes. If your goal is to be a writer and you want to enjoy what you do, why does the process feel so excruciating? I mean, really...between teaching, other jobs, and just trying to keep it together, how can I set aside a time to write? 

Here's what I decided: I have no choice. I have to be creative in some way (writing, design, whatever). It's a moral imperative for me. I'm going to be thinking about it anyway. (Deb says the words bounce around in her head and they're going to keep doing that until she gets them out on paper.) I know what she means.

Here's the world's worst analogy: My mind's like a bathroom sink. I've got all this detritus clogging my pipes. Being creative and allowing my mind to wander and ponder, before refocusing and organizing is like taking a snake tool and removing the nasty hairballs and bits of decaying debris. Occasionally, one might come up with a diamond ring in the process, but it's fairly unlikely. The important thing is that the water can flow through the pipes again.

The upside is that I don't worry so much about the outcome of a project. I might have a great creative brainstorm that turns out to be an ugly disaster, but there will be some that are worthwhile.

Book review: Letting Go of the Words

Increasingly, people rely on the web for many things: paying bills, doing research, product support, and the list goes on. Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works by Janice (Ginny) Redish explores how to write for this relatively new medium.

As writers, we often assume that users will read every word that we write. Nope. They scan. We assume that people will arrive at a website page using the very careful navigation we've set up. Not so--maybe they found the page using a search engine. Speaking as a user, my frustration with some websites has lead me to give up on them.

This book has 13 chapters and is full of real-life examples of what actual websites have done. Writing for the web requires you to understand what your goals are and who your audience is. What I found most useful about the book was the way Redish demonstrated what was good and not so good using short call-outs. Overall, I felt like there was lots of great information, even for experienced writers, but there were times I felt like she was repeating herself, especially with the end of chapter summaries. This book is a worthwhile resource for anyone looking to improve website content.

Beginning a blog

Before I actually started this blog, I thought for several months about doing it, but I got hung up on the details. What should I name it? Should I blog under my real name? What should it be about? I finally decided that it was more important to just start the blog. If you're wondering about blogging yourself, read this post by Penelope Trunk. Good food for thought.