giovedì 3 aprile 2008

Writer's Block

I guess that's what I've had, or I could call it laziness. In reality it is neither. I took a trip to the U.S. During that time I was in Tulsa for a week, and I thought I would be writing my blog every day, but I didn't, obviously. I've been encouraging my father to start writing every day. He has the desire to start, but can't seem to find the right method, which leads to frustration. The end result is that nothing gets done.
It isn't that I haven't had ideas or even mundane, yet somehow interesting, events to recount. Sometimes there are things you want to say, to put out there, that you know you really shouldn't. I am constrained sometimes by my unwillingness to upset others with my caustic observations and criticisms. These things I should write, but they should be private little scribbles to myself. Just because I think something doesn't mean I should say it regardless of the feelings of others. I'm not out to make a splash by saying the most outragous, and often hurtful, things possible. I'll leave that to Germaine Greer (Follow this link http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/germaine-greer-pop-bitch-479025.html if you would like to see what I mean. It's nice she can make a point supporting one person at the expense of someone else, namely Linda McCartney. I wonder if she has an old ax to grind).
Not that I have all these negative thoughts about others either. Sometimes the way to describe a situation could sound like criticisms. I am reluctant to include others, out of a fear that I would inadvertantly hurt them. No one wants their foibles and ideosyncracies written so they have to acknowledge them. I certainly don't!
Another problem with this medium is that you do this in isolation. You are never sure that what you are writing is read. When I first started working in television, I had what a co-worker of mine referred to as a "volunteer" position. Certainly I got paid, but I worked six days a week from 4:30am to 9am, very part-time, yet very time-consuming. As a result I had to work other temp-jobs to pay the rent. Some of the other office workers that I met during this period opined that they could be a morning-show host -- it was easy, all you had to do was read. The first time I ran camera in the studio, I realized just how hard being a morning-show host is. You work in an empty studio and have to remain peppy even when you have no idea if your "conversation" with the viewing public is successful. To me blogging presents the same difficulty. You want to be entertaining, but it is hard to go on entertaining when you're not sure that anyone is being entertained. So you can call it writer's block, or even laziness, but really it's losing faith.