Is this metablogging? Perhaps.

I’m not going to dwell on that though, there has been plenty written about that avenue / type of post, instead I’m gonna be honest.

My writing process

If anyone has read any of the entries of Manu’s (now Zachary’s) series People and Blogs you’ll have seen this question asked: What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

I always read this section in detail and with great fascination because, for a long time, I didn’t think I had a process. Not singular one at least.

Yet the more I think about it, the more I realised that I definitely do, sort of.

Most of the time it depends on the driver, the idea behind the post.

If I’m writing a reaction to something I’ve read, I can usually finish that in one go, at worst I finish a first draft and then edit it heavily on re-reading it, before publishing it. At best, I can get a nice clean post written up that doesn’t need much in the way of editing.

The latter are rare.

Lately I’ve been trying to maintain a cadence with my longer Musings. At least one a week, sometimes two. I’m not really focused on word count, nor whether a post will be popular*; it’s more about the style of writing and having something I genuinely want to say.

And that’s where I start to come unstuck.

The Ideas

I’m not sure of ideas, and I really don’t mind if my blog isn’t interesting to anyone —I write to understand my own thoughts first and foremost— so the list of topics isn’t limited at all.

Maybe that’s the problem as, at present, I have a long list of half-written ideas that are stuck in draft.

Which brings me to the other half of my writing process.

Get an idea, start jotting down some thoughts about it, maybe a link to read later before I finish writing it, and … then I just drift away from it.

I think the lack of urgency is what leaves them sitting there, unfinished and motionless. With no real driver to publish them —a response post needs to be published within a reasonable timeframe of the original post, no?— and they seem to develop an unfortunate case of I’ll publish it later... .

Here’s my question

I’ve done this before, many many moons ago, and given I have no real push to complete any of these drafts, I wonder if you, dear reader, can help?

From the list below, which one would you most like to read next?

• Hithcock and Kubrick
• Yes I play Video Games
• Scottish Rain
• Markdown is rubbish
• The Apple Journal long game
• Your flag is not patriotic
• I am still alive
• My tattoos and me
• You should be dancing
• Yes All Men
• The Cliched Parent
• Vanity of age
• There is no god
• Material wants
• Life sucks
• I am writing a book
• A Vasectomy
• Me, a mentor
• Glastonbury Festival memories
• Sexuality and gender
• Come to Scotland

Feel free to leave a single choice or a top three.

Because right now I’m stuck writing a post about not being able to write a post… despite having twenty-one posts sitting in Drafts.

* I wrote about a childhood memory recently, and I loved writing it and sharing it and it got very few views, but one lovely comment. Yay.