The Search for the Rosetta Stone or Confessions of a Serial Blogger

November 17, 2009 · by Joanna Paterson · in

The labels you’re given, or that you learn to apply to yourself, can hold you back.  Limit your sense of what is possible. Peeling off those labels, and replacing them with words that create space, opportunity, and possibility can be a powerful thing.

I wrote that back in April of this year and I think, to be honest, I’ve been reflecting on what it means for me ever since.

Was the label of Confident Writing limiting me in some way?

Was there another structure, framework, or label that would make sense and help to create a more powerful sense of what was possible?

Was there a different way to channel my ideas and energies?

Big questions that have been rumbling and rolling around for most of the last six months.

Working out how to manage the blogging demands of comments and conversation has brought some of those considerations to a head, at least in terms of how I organise myself online.

I’m still trying to figure some of this out, and I know I haven’t yet worked out all the answers.

And that’s just the answers that I think will work for me.  I’m not pretending this is advice that others ‘should’ follow.

But I did want to share some of my thinking with you, both to help me work through how I take these strands forward, and to help shape the future development of this blog (of which you are a crucial part.)

I’m not sure how to make this a short post… so I think I’ll just allow it to be the length it needs to be.  With no further apologies and explanations, I’ll begin. ~~~

I’d been thinking for a while that some of the labels I applied to myself or let others apply were getting in the way of where I wanted to be.

The words around ‘writing’ seemed to fit uncomfortably with me. I didn’t really think of myself as a writer: rather someone who enjoyed using words to create space and possibilities for others. (Was that just semantics?)

Although I was grateful for the recognition of Confident Writing as a blog for writers that sat uneasily with me: I didn’t blog about publishing, or creative fiction, or short story writing, or freelance rates and getting writing gigs… so how did the blog sit within that genre?  (And did it matter?)

It wasn’t so much the writing that interested me as the people who were doing the writing… often people who didn’t or couldn’t dare to apply the label of ‘writer’ to themselves either.

They were ‘just’ people who wanted some extra encouragement and support to find the confidence to write. (Yes, I know, some introverts can think too much about things that don’t really matter ;-) )

I knew there were other things that I wanted to work on, to write about, to learn about and to teach.

Things that were around natural inspiration and tapping into the source, about trusting our own creativity, about mindfulness and being mindful in our writing, about walking and what happens to our words and our writing when we spend more time outside, about writing just for the sheer hell of it not to fit any genre or form, just for the pleasure of the words falling on the page.

But I couldn’t work out what those things were about.  What brought them together.  What kind of label I could apply to them that would be big enough that I could stop searching, and manageable enough that I could write about, blog about, teach, market and sell.

A friend said to me it was like a search for the Rosetta Stone.

(The Rosetta Stone was a key that allowed linguists to translate ancient hierogylphics.  It’s now also used as an expression for something that is a critical key to the process of decryption.) The analogy made a lot of sense.

But as the summer went on and I looked harder and harder for the Rosetta Stone, the further it seemed out of reach.

It was like chasing a piece of soap round the bath.  The harder you squeezed, the faster it flew.  (Yes, I realise that searching too hard is generally not a good idea in such circumstances, but it’s not always easy to take your own medicine, is it?)

I started working with a client who was re-organising her online presence into one place.

One brand, one identity, one home.  Integrated, strong and confident. I was jealous.

I wanted some of that too.  I wanted that… that label, that space, that brand that would encompass everything I was about, and everything I did.

But the more I tried to contain things in one idea the more other ideas kept on bursting out at the seams.  (I think there is a game analogy here but I can’t think what it is: you’re trying to hit a target with a hammer, but as soon as you knock one down another appears somewhere else.  Am I imagining this, or can you help me out by reminding me what it is?)

Before I knew it, new websites were in danger of being born, and my domain name purchasing fetish was getting out of hand…

~~~

At the same time, I was taking stock of Confident Writing, and working through some of those tricky blog equations.

These were the conclusions that I reached:

1. I need space beyond Confident Writing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still want, need and love this blog.  I do.

2. I need to find a way to slow down the posting frequency, because each bright idea I share generates comments and conversation that I need to (choose to) find time to respond to.

3. I need to adjust my comment policy so I continue to respond to each comment (while that’s feasible), but based on ‘real thoughtful‘ rather than real time (which is self-imposed nonsense when you think about it).

4. One of the ways I could slow down the posting would be to create other outlets for some of my ideas.

5. That didn’t need to mean more social media interaction though.  Remembering the advice on the blogging equations, it is possible to blog (to create and publish online) in a way that doesn’t demand a response.  You can do it in a myriad of ways: to share some material  you’ve found, to pass on information and tips, or to process your own thoughts.  The trick is just to get clear which is which before you start.

6. The focus for Confident Writing should be community and conversation: creating space that encourages you to write with confidence.

7. I need to get better at asking my readers for help in the things that I’m doing.  And I will.

I’d ended up in a place I wasn’t expecting when I started.  Not one streamlined site, but several new outlets.

Not one key, one rosetta stone, but several new strands of thinking, playing out in tandem. It didn’t seem that wise.  It didn’t seem that sensible in terms of brand management.  It didn’t seem to be what I’d advise to someone else in similar circumstances.

But heck: does that matter? It seemed to work for me, which should be enough. And then I read something that gave me the nudge and the permission that I needed.  It was just one line, following on from another, well loved, sentence:

Life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage. Anais Nin

A call to expand our lives into the space available, and beyond! ~ Jan Scott Nelson, Grow Your Own Life

The space available, and beyond.

Indeed.

Grow your own life.  Grow your own space.

And if I need more space to think, and learn, and grow just now then that’s what I shall do. I’ll let the new sites be born, and worry about the Rosetta Stone another day.

 

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