Carl Tyler's Blog

1 - Welcome to the club ...

Same experience, I can talk about Sametime for hours, but writing can be laborious - I get serious writer;s block. I am creating a proposal for a Sametime staging environment to test out FIPS for a client ... it is only 3 - 4 pages but I have been writing for days now ... still waiting for that super model-turned-muse to walk through the door and kiss me real hard!

2 - I found my solution back in high school when I was having to write 2 page papers every night for Christianity class. I found if I had a cocktail and waited until about 10pm, then my brain slowed down enough to focus. You can skip the cocktail but I still find writing at night works best for me. YMMV

3 - [quote]I'd have no problem talking for an hour on it[/quote]

So talk.

Get a cheap little recorder, or use one of those fancy computer thingys - I hear they can record the human voice now.

Then transcribe (or pay someone else to transcribe) and edit.

You might throw 90% of it out, but it will get you unstuck.

4 - Let me know if you want a ghost-writer. :D

For me, the writing part is easy. The difficult part is coming up with ideas to pitch to editors. I tend to think my article ideas are cutting-edge enough (I realize there's no rule that they have to be).

5 - You are not alone mate. I could have written this post verbatim.
RoB

6 - @5 Oh God, it's worse than I thought, I might be part Italian

7 - When I have trouble writing (which is not really that often, but it does happen), I make it rhyme. Seriously, I write the whole thing in iambic pentameter. In the (usual) case where that is not acceptable to the intended audience, I then rewrite without the iambic pentameter, but using the poem as a guide.

Of course, that sounds even harder than just writing it, but worrying about the rhymes takes away all the worry about the writing. It also makes the language more interesting, as you are forced away from trite, common word choices.

Still, your mileage may vary. Perhaps I am just weird this way.

8 - I think you're perfectly capable of doing the writing, you just kind of seize up from thinking about doing the writing.

You've said you can write a paragraph -- and I've seen that in this blog. Well, guess what an article is made up of. You can outline -- just keep refining your outline down to the paragraph level. Then take an outline entry, forget everything else, and write a paragraph about that.

Then take the next outline entry.

When all done, read thru, look for any connections you failed to make, and edit them in.

Also see [url={ Link } by Bird[/url] by Anne Lamott.

9 - Personally I find it's better to write the outline and dump as much info about the subject on to paper as I can. Then Sleep on it.

in the morning my mind has sorted out everything and I can sit down and blat the whole thing out. no bother.