Hacking My Way Through the Bog..I have loved to write, ever since I was able to pick up a pencil. I was that kid who thought, but knew better than to admit (since I did want to have friends), “Oh, boy! Three terms papers this semester!” There was something about the research, the discovery, the putting pen to paper. Now, of course, it’s fingers to keyboard, but the thrill’s the same.

Loving to do something, though, doesn’t mean it’s always easy.  Ask any great athlete or scientist or artist.  Sometimes it’s just plain difficult. Like today. I made a commitment to post weekly and here it is Wednesday and I don’t have a clue what to write about.

So, I thought about how I’ve written in the past. I’ve been lucky. Most of the time, someone else has given me the subject. Interview this person or that and write a 500-word piece.. or find out about this new technology and prepare an article that our employees can understand.

For me, having a subject is always half the battle. I start by finding out everything I can about the topic. The Internet is certainly a vast improvement over the old card catalogue system. Any interesting and relevant tidbits I see are copied and pasted into a plain Word document. With re-writing and proper annotation, this gives me the body of my piece.

For example, there are probably thousands – maybe millions – of posts about writer’s block. Take Merlin Mann, who wrote, “I recently had occasion to do some…errr…research on writer’s block. Yeah, research. That’s what I was doing. Like a scientist. I found lots of great ideas to get unstuck and wrote the best ones on index cards.”

Mann explains one of his tips as follows: “Try freewriting - Sit down and write anything for an arbitrary period of time—say, 10 minutes to start. Don’t stop, no matter what. Cover the monitor with a manila folder if you have to. Keep writing, even if you know what you’re typing is gibberish, full of misspellings, and grammatically psychopathic. Get your hand moving and your brain will think it’s writing. Which it is. See?”

So, now that I’ve managed to write the middle of this piece, it’s simply a matter of the beginning and the end. Both are important. The beginning must grab the reader; while the end should make him (or her) happy to have persevered to the conclusion.

For beginnings and ends, I like to take a walk.. or a shower. Something about the fresh air or the rhythmic pounding of the water inspire me with stories or analogies. Working on the title is occasionally helpful. How can I describe what I’ll be writing about in just a few words?

As I sit here with wet hair, it struck me that sometimes writing is like a finely hewed knife slicing butter. Other times, it’s just hacking through an overgrown bog. Like today.

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