Writer’s block

The process of writing my own website content — or rather, the process of failing to get anything written or posted for way, way too long — taught me some lessons about how it feels to be a client. It’s difficult to know exactly what you want to say until you try a few things and see what works and what doesn’t. Changing your mind or changing the scope of the project, feeling out the best way to present the message, and struggling to get clear on exactly who the audience is are all normal parts of the process. It very much helps to have some experienced guidance. Because, just as it’s hard to be your own hairstylist or your own marriage counselor, it’s hard to be your own writer.

The bottom line is that it is much easier for most writers to write other peoples’ stories, marketing copy, bios, or brochures than to write our own. My friend and fellow writer Nancy Gordon, of The Gordon Group, LLC, compares it to the case of the cobbler’s children who have no shoes. Whatever kind of work you do, you tend to be less motivated (or maybe more intimidated) about doing it for yourself or your loved ones than for your customers.

When I was in the restaurant business, I knew gifted chefs who ate only cereal with milk or PBJs at home. And I had a landscaper friend who always had elaborate plans for the perennial bed she never managed to plant in her own yard despite having beautified the gardens of half the town.

Maybe that’s what stops more experts from writing books: they have the expertise, the experience, the passion, the content to write a book, but actually doing it would mean taking time away from their customers and their business. And risking embarrassment. It’s one thing to give advice, it’s quite another to put it in writing and put it out there for public scrutiny. That’s the humbling lesson I was talking about. I realized that writers share the fear of writing that non-writers have when it comes to doing our own work.

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