A Bit of Metablogging to Jumpstart the Process

This is what I call "metablogging." It's basically writing about blogging, and the only way that I've ever been able to get started. When I first started this blog, back in the October after my now four year old son was born, I started with metablogging. I talked about how hard it was to get started, how hard it was to figure out what I should be writing about. Well, here I am, almost three years later, wondering how to get started. I've hardly been able to write at all since before my 21 month old son was born.
 I keep telling people: It's been hard to write even a basic email for months and months and months. My friend Alina assures me that it's the left-over hormones from pregnancy and breastfeeding that have done this to me. Ever since she told me that, I suppose I've used it as an excuse for not getting started. I've tried posting to the blog on numerous occasions, but I've been tired, or sleep-deprived, or maybe only too easily frustrated to get in there and do it.

I've tried writing things that weren't meant for publication. I've tried taking down my thoughts as they came to me. One morning I typed up a report of sorts concerning an experiment in prayer I was undertaking, but it all came to nothing.

A few days ago, my cousin, who is a successful freelance writer, posted something about a website where you can to post 750 words of freewriting. It's a tool for writers to sort of warm themselves up for the real work that is supposed to fill their day. I'm unwilling to subscribe to the service, because I have some unanswered questions about it, but the idea is imminently sound, and at some point I will probably succumb. It's the same sort of thing Peter Elbow promotes. Peter Elbow, whose book Everyone Can Write: Essays Toward a Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching Writing, I recently read, is a major advocate of the freewriting exercise, the premise being that successful writers need to do lots and lots of writing, not all of it anxiety ridden. He also argues that college students need low stakes outlets for writing, so that it becomes an habit and not merely an exercise in requirement. There are some lovely quotes from Elbow which I shared on facebook. Maybe I should go back and repost them here, where they can be read and remembered.

Note:  If you look back over my older posts you'll notice that the metablogging is always done in italics.  Something about that just makes me feel good.