Publish or Perish

Some months ago, I was invited to become a regular blogger on Patch after having written and submitted a press release for a local church that was launching in Oakhurst Village. I was immediately flattered and excited that the editor extended the invitation, but my elation soon gave way to a moderate form of sheer panic. 

What would I blog about?  Would I be able to dig up my muses out of their slumbering graves and force them to get their lazy butts back to work?  Moreover, if I was successful in nervously sweating out some semblance of logical sentences and stringing them together into relatively coherent paragraphs, then posting them on Patch, would anyone read or care?  And what would I blog about?  (Did I say that already?)

So I sat on the offer for a few months and moved on to other daily pursuits.  Always, though, in the back of my mind, I wanted to dive headfirst into the blogging life, and the profile I had created on Patch kept tapping me on the shoulder inside my head, going “Look here, dude, you think you’ve got problems?  Try sitting here in cyberspace with no one to talk to and no one to look in on you.  It’s getting pretty damn lonely in here.”

“But I’m not sure.  I don’t know if I have anything to say that will interest readers.  There’s a lot of stuff to read out there, and in there where you are.  A lot of times when I’m sitting here on the futon, my brain feels like the disgusting little pea-shaped thingies that Ren and Stimpy were always extracting from their heads through their ears.  What could I possibly squeeze out of that?”

“I don’t get it.”

“Look, Profile, you’re me. Aren’t you?  How can you not understand what I’m talking about?  I have so much trouble coming up with interesting ideas sometimes.  I’m just an average, everyday guy, thinking average, everyday things.  If I’m lucky, on random days my pea brain will actually bounce around a little and loosen up something profound, but who’s to say my ordinary thoughts will be of interest to anyone else?  Another potential snag is that I’m a little bit of saint, a lotta bit of sinner.  What if what I’d write embarrassed me or rubbed someone the wrong way?”

“So, the gist of this is that you feel like you’re an average, ordinary dude with average, ordinary things to say?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Guess what.  Your potential readership out there is made up of a lot of other average, ordinary people.  Write for them.  Not everybody will be into what you have to say, but chances are a lot of them might. So just get it out there, release it, and hope for the best.  You remember what Miss Edwards told you in high school, right?  ‘Publish or perish’?”

“Yeah.  I loved her.  She was my favorite English teacher.”

“Miss Edwards wouldn’t want you to perish, would she?”

“No, I don’t think she would.”

“Okay, then.  So what are you waiting for?  Get to work.  If you run into writer’s blocks, just remember you don’t have to build walls with them.  And if you do screw up and build walls, just climb over them and keep going.  Something good is bound to come of it.  Somewhere in Heaven, Miss Edwards is agreeing with me.”