Getting back in the saddle

I had been blogging regularly for two years when I stopped.

The creation of my Polly Dextrous blog was the first tentative step along the path to launching my design business. I was writing mainly about my creative endeavours and my life in France, primarily with the aim of building up a network of people interested in my work and to engage them in the process.

I had had minor success with some of the posts relating to community in its various forms. This is something I strongly support, whether face to face or online, especially in our small rural French village where it is easy to feel isolated. However, I must admit that most of what I was writing fell on deaf ears. I tried various different angles in an attempt to reach out to my potential audience, but, after a 6-week reader challenge that ran over the school summer holidays, I stopped.

It wasn’t a conscious decision to stop, I just needed a break as it had been fairly intense planning, creating, photographing and writing for the event. And the longer I left it, the more excuses I found not to start again.

It’s not that I don’t like writing, I love writing (apart from in the infant’s class where we had to write a ‘story’ every day). In fact, I’m always writing and reformulating ideas and phrases in my head (which is a bit of a problem when it’s emails that I am replying to and only realise later that they didn’t actually make it from my head to the ‘real’ world…)

Although in some ways this does contribute because it combines with my poor ability when it comes to finishing things. I often reach a point where there is something (often low on the ‘fun’ scale) that I really need to finish and I won’t let myself start something new until it’s done. However I keep getting distracted from this thing that I don’t really want to as I have tons of new things that I want to try…

Time management is also always an issue. I had got to the point where the blog was taking up an afternoon a week and I felt there were other things I should be doing with this time. Plus, my computer was not somewhere I wanted to be. Even on the brightest days, I had to work under artificial light and my ageing eyesight meant wearing glasses to work, which just wasn’t pleasant.

More crosses in my ‘Cons’ column. Then the self-doubt set in and I can hear the nagging voices in my head;

“No-one reads it anyway”.

“How do I suddenly start writing again when I’ve been silent for so long?”

“Visually it looks a bit rubbish now, perhaps I should set up a new site first. Oh, but that will be scary. I’m not good at computers.”

Cross; cross; cross; cross ….

But then there started to be a few ‘pros’ ticks.

Without any thought for my abandoned blog, I joined Makelight.
Initially I took a photography course as I felt my product images were poor. From here, this lead to other courses about social media; branding and, oh joy, a focus on blogging.

This was it; the kick up the bum I had been waiting for. Finally, I was going to find my missing motivation. But the start of May came and went. I watched a few of the videos; amazingly inspiring as always; but there were still more negative voices in my head. There were still plenty of “I’ll do it when;…” excuses:

• “When the kids have gone back to school…”
• “When my parents have finished visiting….”
• “When this order is completed…. “

But the ice was starting to melt. I had written the odd piece; mainly vaguely politically motivated rants which didn’t at all fit in with my blog ethos. But I had written something and put pen to paper.

Ideas were percolating through from emilyquinton and Stef Lewandowski presentations:

• It was important to find a work environment which felt comfortable and felt conducive to work (and didn’t contain too many distractions)
• It was OK to put things out into the world without them being perfect and with all the snags fixed.
• It was OK to write just because you needed to write something and without it necessarily having an audience.

Through the community, I was also starting to read more and to exercise the intellectual side of my brain. This felt good. I was excited to read things that other people had written, even if I didn’t agree. And if I didn’t agree, I found myself formulating my own ideas for or against and expanding on the subjects raised.

So when Stef suggested setting up ‘The Thread’ publication for Makelight members here on Medium, I decided to give it a go.

It overcame a couple of my psychological hurdles in that it would be independent of my blog. People wouldn’t be put off by the ‘look’ of it, I didn’t have to worry about having the potentially embarrassing “Hi, do you remember me?” conversation with any existing readers and I could write about something which didn’t necessarily have to fit in with my old posts.

I once heard an anecdote about Stephen King which I often bring to mind. He described meeting a fan who commented that they too would love to write. King’s reply was,

“No you wouldn’t, because if you did, you would already be doing it”

Writing doesn’t need fancy equipment; a notebook and a pen is just fine. The difficult bit is connecting the two and hopefully finding that they result in something interesting. I’m not sure that I have achieved this now, but I have started.

It might lack a well worked structure, or even a particular message. But here is my first pancake out of the pan: a bit pale and pasty, but a pancake all the same. It is written and I am once again a writer and that feels good.