I had an idea for my post this week, and came to work this morning thinking it would be relatively easy to get the words on the page (type the letters on the screen). I’m working on revisions right now for a chapter for a book about service and identity in academic librarianship and, somewhat ironically, I have a heavier-than-usual college service commitment this semester. I’m super, super, super busy, and have service on my mind, so I thought I’d write a few paragraphs about service outside the library and how that impacts my work inside the library.
Except that whoops, I’ve already done a lot of writing about service here, apparently: this post from almost a decade (!) ago, and another from a couple of years later, and one even more recently after I’d taken my current position a director. Between those posts and the chapter I’m working on, I think I’m fresh out of service-related ideas for this post.
So what now? What do we do with blogger’s block? Perhaps less formal than writer’s block, blogger’s block is most definitely A Real Thing, and I’d guess many folks suffer from it from time to time. I’ve tried various strategies to counter my bouts of blogger’s block in the past:
- Reading! This is old faithful advice that I’ve found usually works: the more I read, the more I find to write about. I (still!) have an RSS feed of library and higher ed blogs that I follow, and I try to keep up with library and higher ed news media as well.
- Twitter! Melissa’s post last week was a great primer on the benefits of Twitter, where there’s a robust library and higher ed community sharing and discussing information and news. Despite the very real problems with the platform, I’ve stayed on Twitter because I do find value in being able to interact with friends and colleagues, and to listen and learn from librarians, academics, and others.
- Research! Often there are aspects of whatever research projects I’m working on that can serve as inspiration for blog posts. I’ve also found that blogging about my research can be useful as a way to work out my initial thoughts and ideas before sharing results in a more formal way at conferences or in publications.
- A List! I’ve sometimes kept a list of possible topic ideas, many of them half-baked (if that!), and returned to the list periodically to see if anything catches my eye. This strategy works best for ideas that are less time-sensitive (says the person who is just realizing that she hasn’t looked at her list in a while).
- Work Stuff! Not unexpectedly, the main source of inspiration for my posts here at ACRLog is what’s happening in my job (and associated work responsibilities). Similar to research, sometimes blogging about job-related ideas, questions, or concerns is useful for figuring them out, and I’ve gotten lots of great suggestions from commenters as well.
Right now I think my main problem is that I’ve been too busy to rely on my usual strategies, unfortunately. But listing them out here reminds me that they exist (because my busy brain has a hard time remembering that), so I’ll for sure be in much better shape when it’s time to write my next blog post.
