Pay clear Attention, quislings! Today we have the Honour of a Guest Lecture. An Adept of a Strange (and Possibly Oriental) Path of Awesomeness, Catherine has some Excellent Advice which you should Heed.
Umm, hello everyone.
It’s a dreadful honour to be here, and a little intimidating, too. It’s been some time since I was, ah, disciplined by the VerbHounds, but certain parts of my anatomy remember the encounter very well.
I wanted to tell you about a phenomenon I see regularly. It doesn’t fill me with the same rage that Ethelie would undoubtedly feel, but it does make me sad and angry. It’s about websites.
(And Moleskines, and iPhones, legal pads, dungeon walls, parchments, and all of the other flat objects we use to house our words.)
And the problem I have with them is…
None of them matter if you don’t write.
Far too often I see this doleful sight: the owner has spent many dollars and hours building the most beautiful, user-friendly, search-engine-optimised, social-media-integrated, delightful website of all time. It has everything it needs, except for content.
And so it’s a beautiful, optimised, delightful… failure.
Content is the most important
Don’t spend three hours changing your font size instead of writing. (Don’t spend three hours gluing stickers onto your notepad, either.)
Start writing while your website is still ugly. Start writing before there’s a website at all!
Before you know who your audience will be. Before people approve of your ideas. Before you know what you’re writing about. Before you find a partner. Before anything.
At worst, your drafts will be used to start a fire in the pot-bellied stove and you will need to write more. This will be so much easier now you’re a Regular Writer; twice as fast is not an impossible feat.
The perils of putting it off
If you delay until you have all the Answers? Your writing muscles will be weak and unable to carry your new inspiration. Your first entries will be so lamentably flawed that you will wonder if your idea isn’t quite right yet. (It is! But you’re not ready.) There are those, depressed by the “failure” of their idea, who abandon it and start again.
Often, of course, they don’t write then, either.
Poor fools. The Hounds will see to them.
The monster under the keyboard
Is fear.
A thousand horrifying flavours of risk and uncertainty and consequences; a hundred imaginary perils, a dozen judging voices (some of them yours)… fear is the monster under the keyboard. We must learn to tame our fears to write great work.
Not exactly news, I know. But something you might not know (or have forgotten) is that writing is a great antidote to fear. Writing is action, and action is the single best fear-tamer there is. It doesn’t have to be great writing. (It doesn’t even have to make sense.) Every time you gather yourself and start the keys (or the pen) moving, you get stronger. Braver. And much, much less likely to acquire entertaining scars from the VerbHounds.
I have gathered my own small wisdoms on the subject of fear and websites and turned them into a resource:
Awesome Fear-Wrangling: tame your website fears, grow an awesome website (affiliate link). If you think it would be helpful to you, come over and have a look. You can use the word “scribe” to get a discount of $20.
Or you can save yourself a bit of money and follow the simplest advice ever:
Subsiste statim sermonem et scribe.
You make such a very good point!
Shut the fuck up and write, indeed.
I am learning. Mostly because there are Verbhounds on my tail and if I don’t, they will come and get me and then I’ll just be a brain in a jar.
…maybe I’d better go and write something now.
Thank you Catherine, for another Bite of your Awesomeness.
Thank you, Ethelie, for Allowing her to Post.
Yes, you’re right. Action is All. Right Actions even Better.
I shall definitely work on my Guest Posts this weekend to maintain the Flow. I have Entertaining Scars enough from Life, I do not need more from Verbhounds.
Oh, and we’ll be posting on CrowTarot Tours soonest, as per your excellent advice. Who cares if they can’t read the text? Maybe Exhorations from Readers will Encourage us to finally get off our Butts & Fix it.
Btw, Ethelie, you might want to Suggest to your Webmaster that they Install a Plug-in to allow one to Subscribe to Comments. It could be a very Useful Tool of Communication.
Thnx again, everyone for the inspiration & tail-punting! :>
Mademoiselle Viret! I trust your writing Practice was fruitful?
Agent Bird: what a Splendid Idea. Do you have any Recommendations?
Yes, I do. When I log in to make my Post, which shall be Shortly, I shall look up the one we are using, which seems to be Used by Many, with Good Results.
*back* Here’s the info on the one we use. It was Recommended on the Remarkable Board, so we took that as a Good Sign.
http://txfx.net/wordpress-plugins/subscribe-to-comments/
Hope the Information is Helpful!
Thank you, Agent Bird. I shall present your Recommendation to the Director for his Decision.
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