There is a fear that gnaws at the back of a writer’s mind at every moment of every day.

“I don’t write enough.”

“I should be working on [insert main project, or side-project you’ve just picked up with the enthusiasm that only comes from avoiding your main project, or the ‘personal project’ you’ve picked up to avoid your side project.]”

In me, this tweak in the lower gut area is immediately followed by “You’re a god awful writer because you don’t write.” And somewhere mixed in there is “When’s the last time you went running?”

This essay form is something new to Cuddlefishes, and it has everything to do with me trying to wrap my head around what they call “the writing life.” I’ve surfaced for the first time in some months with some free time. Great. I love it. Commence unwinding. But unwinding really lasts about two days doesn’t it? Then starts the gnawing.

“Fucking write something you lazy sack of shit.” I would love to say my subconscious is much nicer, but it’s not. It’s really not.

But back to blogging. [please excuse the bread-tangle-of-format of these essays – I will explain soon.]

This essay is a bread-tangle of words. Really. I’m having a hard time approaching the idea of blogging. No, I understand what blogs are, what blogs mean for publishing and citizen journalism and the new half-life of the written word. My thoughts on blogs can be summarized as this:

There are now more blogs than any sad Sandie could read in a lifetime. Ignorning the lofty sci-fi-goosebump-tingles notion of the complete body of blogs as some new literary aeon – a colossal pulsing mass of collective zeitgeist – Blogs sit in two camps for me:

Camp 1: Professional, or semi-professional publications. Political blogs, industry blogs, Cute Overload – now that the barrier to publication has gone kaputskies, Press has fractured into a million little pieces, each focused it’s light on a million little subjects. This is the head of the long tail of web writing. [I will come back to the long tail often in my essays. It is an idea that is re-framing the way I look at media, and the industries I plan to be a part in.] Some argue that articles are too short, and move off of google’s search returns so fast that they die faster than any other form of writing. Others argue that they are killing the art of long-form discussion and debate. I disagree – the best blogs provide a culture for the growth of more new and focused discussion. But those are the best blogs. The blogs that people read because they say something – something timely, something informed, something that somebody want’s to know.

Camp 2: Everything else.

I’ve started to look at the internet as a big echo-chamber. So much noise, combined with the shear amount of information creates not a textured, intricate web of rational thoughts and creative product, but instead a great big blanket of mush. That’s right, folks. If you hold a microscope to that blanket of mush, you see that it’s made of websites. Google has become king of holding the microscope for us, so that we no longer have to conceptualize the internet as a whole. Which is good, because if we did, we would realize that the amount of collective effort that has been put into the acres of mush, landscapes of mush, worlds of mush, that Google will never guide an eye to is soul-crushing. Or at least for me it is.

I digress.

Again. I’m sorry.

There is a term that used to exist in the publishing business: “Vanity Press.” It was used, not so flatteringly, for people who self-financed and self-published their own books. These books were printed in limited numbers for friends and family, and meant a heck of a lot to the people who wrote them. Because they wrote a book, and who the fuck really does that anyway? But the thought on the industry side was “If this guys 500 page epic about a cattle rancher in Boise couldn’t get a deal, then it sucks and doesn’t belong on paper.” The Generation-Post Z in me wants to look at the blogosphere and shout “Hey man, we don’t need your publishing deal and we don’t need your paper!” And that part of me would be completely right. There are tons of gems getting read now, just as there are comedians breaking on youtube, filmmakers breaking on vimeo, and bands breaking on myspace. But for those who do not make blogging their main writing goal – what is there to do?

I could write something about my life, and the scripts I’m working on. But then, I keep a notebook. That’s all stuff for the notebook. I could write essays on the things that keep me awake at night – my generation, being a young writer-in-training, being a television writer in the next ten years, the internet scaring me – but who would read? Would not my efforts be better just writing my medium? Just as the bloggers are writing blogs, shouldn’t I be writing a movie or play?

Or is there something in between a journal, a writer’s notebook, and a professional product [in my case, a screenplay or stage play?]

If nobody is reading, if my blogs are joining the millions of other unfocused, “too personal,” “here’s what I think about this” posts, then am I not just adding to the mush?

Am I shouting in the echo chamber here, flailing at the potential of a publishing revolution that I am some years late to?

If only a few friends and family skim these words, is this not vanity press?

I could use the excuse “This is a way to get me writing, to numb the awful gnawing guilt! Hurray!” but then is this just another one of those projects to avoid projects to avoid projects, destined to be abandoned like so many webcomic/short fiction/screenplay/doom metal musicals?

I even now review what I have written and think

“This is not writing. This is not how Twain wrote an essay, or Douglas Adams wrote an article. This is an empty, formless rambling.”

and my subconscious punches me in the face quickly and repeatedly.

But where is the line? Between Blog Post and Essay. Between masturbatory publishing and actual writing? Where is the moment where I give of myself to the world in a way that does not echo back to me in the empty blanket of mush? [Yeah, visualize that shit.]

I have not found it yet, nor will I any time soon I’m sure. But what I will do is begin to write, and keep writing until something of substance emerges – freeing itself from the bog of twisted what-not, also called my brain.

But I give you, reader [whoever you are, brave soul,] the assurance that I will write not about myself as a person, but as a functioning part of things that might interest you:

The Television Industry, Screenwriting School, Generation ZonkedUp, The Writing Life.

Or might not.I’ll try to make it funny. I’ll try to be a shrewd editor. I will fail in every respect.

I’ve come to believe the golden cure for “I don’t write enough” is to just not be a writer. Sadly, I don’t have the conviction to do that. But what I can do is babble until I say something, or seem to say something; like the proverbial peanut butter fed horse. Because everybody loves that proverb about the horse and the peanut butter.

An oldie but a goodie, that one.