“Blogger’s Block”

Reading Andrew Sullivan’s Why I Blog, I found myself inspired by his rooting of the blogging tradition inside the previously established writing-and-revising tradition. Indeed, I chose the blog as my thesis venue because it is “the least veiled of any forum in which a writer dares to express himself.” Of course, when writer is expanded to include artist, I feel the argument could be more easily made for improv actors, but that’s another story.

While writers who do not publish their letters and manuscripts – however few – must painstakingly debate over the “final product” of their work, bloggers wear the process on their sleeves. Sullivan puts this concept more succinctly: “The wise panic that can paralyze a writer—the fear that he will be exposed, undone, humiliated—is not available to a blogger. You can’t have blogger’s block.”

While I would agree that I am in no sort of panic, I do feel the pressures of “blogger’s block” from time to time – yes Mr. Sullivan, it is indeed real. Frustratingly, I will scorn my blog from time to time, feeling it is better to live life than comment on it. Even if I am, as a paraphrase attributed to Alan Watts reads, the universe’s self-conscious realization of being, why do I need to vocalize that realization? Why share knowledge when wisdom cannot be shared?

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