Apologies

Every time I try to talk to you
I get tongue-tied
Seems like everything I say to you
Comes out wrong and never comes out right

–Chad Kroeger (w/Santana)
(30 sec sample and lyrics here)

Writer’s block. Blog ennui. Whatever. But everything I write these past few days “comes out wrong and never comes out right.” At least it seems that way. As an example, one post that shouldn’t have made the cut was that DUI thing I put up day before yesterday. I had bad feelings about it, even after the third editing pass, yet posted it anyway. Suffice to say “it didn’t come out right.” And that’s an understatement!

Being blocked is a strange thing for me. Back in the day when I literally wrote for a living I was rarely blocked, although it did happen occasionally. In most cases (but not all) the block was clearly traceable and explained by the fact I didn’t understand what I was trying to say. The cure was to revisit the subject and learn more, often by talking it over with a subject matter expert. Once I achieved “understanding” the words flowed freely, if not eloquently. Eloquence came with editing, but it came.

I should note that “writing for a living,” in my case means writing and editing technical proposals, most often in response to a “Request for Proposal,” or RFP. The writing involved a mixture of describing technical solutions to specific problems and the “benefits” of our clearly superior solution vis-à-vis the solution(s) of our competitor(s). All under deadline pressure. And one never has enough time, for one reason or another. But hey! It was fun, in a bizarre sort of way, and I loved it.

But that was then. I’m at a loss to identify why I’m having such a hard time these past few days. I write for real fun now (not bizarre fun), it’s not work. Or at least it’s not supposed to be “work,” the way I see it. Yet writing is difficult, and writing well can be damned difficult. One can string words together fairly easily, but organizing those words into coherent thought is hard. It gets harder when one tries to be entertaining as well as informative.

It’s said that “we are our own worst critics,” and that may be part of what’s in play here. I really don’t know, but I’m working on finding out. In the mean time…please accept my apologies for the reduced output. Both of you.

Today’s Pic(s): From last Fall’s San Antonio trip. I was quite taken by this gas fountain in the courtyard of Pat O’Brien’s San Antonio store and took more than a few pictures of it, at least two of which I posted to the blog. But I missed the transaction going on in the right hand side of these pics as I snapped the fountain. Until this morning. Judging from the body language on display, one has the feeling that everything turned out quite well, nu?

October, 2006.