Eenie meenie minie moe ...

catch the blogger by the toe. If he hollers, let him go.

Mild case of blogger fatigue, I'm afraid. Very different from writer's block. Although come to think of it, I am not sure exactly what writer's block really is. I've always thought that it was staring at the blank page, pen in hand (or keyboard at hand), and waiting in vain for inspiration to strike. That doesn't happen to me much. But I do suffer, from time to time, from other types of writing disorders.

Such as for example chronic rewrite syndrome, which is when you keep rewriting something, but it just won't come out write (little writer's joke there, ha ha). In my case, this happens quite a lot because I work out what I want to write as I work, and sometimes, I am just not ready. Thing is, I rarely know when I am ready, and even when I have my doubts I often just wade into the quagmire of my own messy mind anyway, in the hope that writing things down will make things clearer. And overall, it does. Lately, in fact, I am feeling so confident about my success rate (measured as the ratio between the unfinished drafts + deleted entries vs. the published ones) that I even went as far as to suggest this to someone the other day, in the context of a discussion about double-binds and how frustrating they can be.

Another problem I have is when everything I write that I like so much that I can't bear to weed it out. I read somewhere in a book on writing that you should be extremely wary of "the best paragraph", because often, you leave it in because it is so well-written, even if it belongs in a completely different piece. I try to apply this now, but I have to admit it hurts.

And then of course you have writer's bloat, which is when the piece is longer than it need be. That (in my own humble opinion) is only a minor problem for me (I can't go on about it any more, for fear of being branded a liar).

But back to blogger fatigue, which is when you get tired of your own blog. I have been working on it quite intensely for the past few months, and it hit me the other day that I really didn't feel like writing. (Not for lack of material, BTW: I have enough ideas for ten blogs, just not enough time to make them all readable). But today I found the cure. It is called blogging.