Sunday, November 02, 2008

Running on empty

I'm starting to worry whatever magic that's been happening with my blog writing the past couple of months might be starting to wear off. Ever since I came back from Italy it's felt like every time I sat in front of the computer to write a blog post I was bursting with ideas. The last couple of days, it's felt a little bit more shaky. The ideas aren't bursting forth with quite so much ease.

I take some comfort in that other bloggers seem to be running out of steam right now. Part of it is all the elections happening. I like politics and the combination of Canadian federal election, Nunavut territorial election and the US presidential election have been great sources of writing material.

But with two of the election completed and the US presidential election essentially over with, the letdown is starting to sink in. What am I going to write about now? And I'm not the only one feeling that way. Some are also burnt out by the long campaign and are wishing for it to be over.

And yes, I know, the US presidency hasn't been won by Obama yet. However, one website is assessing McCain's odds of winning at 6.3%. Which are ok odds if you have $10 want you to blow at a race track on a longshot with a high payout, but not great if you're a Republican hoping your guy is going to win.

I guess it's time to start flexing the creative muscles again. No more leaning on elections to get through dry spells. I'll have to try and come up with something else.

Oh, and as my good friend Ed has noted, the Canadian Blog Award nominations have opened.

Now, I'm not saying people should rush out and nominate me because frankly I have no earthly idea what category this blog would fall under. But I don't think any Nunavut blog has ever made the final cut for one of these things (I stand to be corrected on that). And hey, we have a nice blogging community up here. It would be nice if we had a few bloggers who made the finals in some of these things and get recognition for what we have.

So I'm off to nominate some of my favourite Nunavut blogs. Maybe you should go and do the same thing.

Last Five
1. Devils and dust - Bruce Springsteen
2. Side of the road - Ben Folds
3. Fully completely - The Tragically Hip
4. Leavin' song - Colleen Power*
5. Stick with me babe - Robert Plant and Allison Krauss

5 comments:

Saskboy said...

A "Nunavut" blog could fit nicely into the Local Blog category, and you may think of another spot too. I'm going to talk it over with the other folks running this year's awards with me, but I think we'll possibly limit the number of categories a single blog can run in, to let more people share the spotlight. So stick to two or three categories at most, per blog nominated.

Megan said...

If you're short on ideas, try proving that you're David Hasselhoff.

towniebastard said...

I don't think so, Megan. In fact, I think I might go so far as to call myself the Anti-Hasselhoff.

Anonymous said...

I've been at this since January 2004.

There have been dry spells, blank spots and periods where everything I typed I just wanted to provide backlinks to stuff I'd written before.

It happens. If memory serves, you've been through the spells before.

It doesn't mean you have run out of stuff. It just means you are going through one of those periodic dry spots. Leave the thing fallow for a bit. People will come back.

And before you know it, you'll be back writing rafts of posts a day.

towniebastard said...

Oh, I have been through dry spells before. This isn't an "oh God, what am I going to do?" post by any stretch. More of an acknowledgment that whatever run I've been on in recent months feels like it's about to end.

I'll still try and post every day. I think it's important to do that, not just for traffic levels, but also as a writing exercise. The only way I would put the blog on hiatus for any period of time would be if I found it was distracting from other kinds of writing that I wanted to focus on.

And I do have space fillers for the month. I have book samples I can use. Plus, when I was home I copied all of my old "So Anyway" columns, so people can see what they were like.