Years ago I had another site which I used to write on quite often. I willingly destroyed it entirely for one reason or the other. Mainly because people I personally knew (IRL as the cool kids say) found out about it, and at the time I wasn’t comfortable with the “Are you going to write about this?” or “I saw what you wrote” comments. I guess it would have been fine if that’s what I was aiming for, but writing anywhere on the internet (except for forums) has always been for three people only in my book – me, myself and I.
 
What I really miss though, was that I was in a habit of writing. I do believe it improved over the years I had the site. And it gave me a certain sense of satisfaction. It’s been – let me think – five and a bit years since I stopped and I’ve stagnated. Got out of the habit. It’s a struggle to get back into it.
 
Since then I’ve been on Twitter and like the pithy aspect of 140 characters, but don’t ever let anyone tell you it helps with writing … unless you’re trying to write Christmas Cracker jokes.  Facebook is still loathsome and I’d love to educate everyone I know on there what alternatives there are – because then I wouldn’t have to be on there!
 
Every day at work I get and send a ridiculous amount of emails. It’s a Global, Corporate environment where email is both necessary and used by people to cover their own back. So even if you have a phonecall, expect a follow-up email  On a bad day 500 emails will hit my inbox and I’d easily send out ~50 a day.  My eyes roll back into my forehead when I read the email ‘gurus’ online who obviously are working with around a quarter of that number but preach about ‘inbox zero’ … it’s a distant dream for me. I’m happy if I get to file a chunk of them in folders every day – because in that world you need to keep the info.
 
What’s the point? Well, that level of email doesn’t lend itself to longform writing – it’s getting more like Twitter to be honest.  In fact there was an Outlook plugin a while back which copied Tweetdeck and I would LOVE that, but it seems to have vanished.
 
So I’m well out of practice.  I love writing.  I actually miss writing letters to people (old skool me). But I miss having writing come to me easily, words, flow, phrases.
 
How to get around that problem? Practice I guess.  Do it regularly and surely the habit will come back. Don’t worry about what I’m writing. Just write.
 
And that – is the sole point of this post.