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03/22/2003 Entry: "Everything we do is Cliché"

One of the real problems with being a writer - especially a writer of fiction, but you get it when you're trying to write inspirational religious stuff too - is in trying to write something that's not been said before.

Douglas Coupland is brilliant, and I hate the scumbag, because he's already said everything I want to say, better; meanwhile, I write Bible notes for a well-known religious publisher, and find myself spouting all the platitiudes I swore I would never, ever use.

It's actually worse when you're asked to write something, because inspiration, in one of the universe's more sadistic turns, invariably leaves when you're called to write something. The less specific your brief, the harder it becomes.

In this, I am saying nothing new (pah. Irony's a pain in the neck).

Blogs are the hardest thing to get right. If you have a blog, you invariably oblige yourself to have something to say, preferably daily, and prefereably in three hundred words or less. Now when you've got something to say (like Richard), this isn't a problem. When you have nothing to say, well.

The result: you have blogs that don't get updated for months; or you get blogs that frankly churcn out piles and piles of crap. Bad poetry, bad opinions, and a hundred thousand people telling you what they had for tea and the amusing thing someone down the road said. And as for the war...

In this, I am saying nothing new: thousands of people have commented on the piles of crap that are out there.

My point? Um, well, I've forgotten. Maybe it's that I heartily approve of Richard's policy of allowing other people to add their voices to his blog (more people = more things to be said). It's just a shame I can't think of anything that hasn't been said many times before. And better.

Posted by Bene Diction @ 03/24/2003 01:15 AM CST

>>It's actually worse when you're asked to write something, because inspiration, in one of the universe's more sadistic turns, invariably leaves when you're called to write something.

Took the words right out of my mouth! Ordinarily I write reams and reams (as evinced by my blog), but faced with writing a feature article for the newspaper, and my mind goes blank. My boss is always complaining that my stories are too short! Unbelievable, isn't it?!

Posted by irene @ 03/23/2003 04:57 PM CST