Writer's block, an owner's guide: The Cluetrain Manifesto
From The Cluetrain Manifesto, by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger (here’s their website) which I picked up for a few bucks in a remainder store:
“When we’re given an assignment… we go to our cubicle and put our heads down for a day, a week, a fortnight. We go through as many drafts as we have to until we have a killer document - a report or an overhead presentation, typically - that nails it all down, comes to conclusions, and is irrefutable.
Then we go to the big meeting and slap it down like Beowulf slaying Grendl. “Here I stand.” we declare, bravado masking our anxiety. And if someone calls our bluff, if someone says, “Hmm, you seem not to have consulted the study the Gartner Group did last quarter” or “You haven’t considered the impact of the dilution of their shares,” you simply are not permitted to say, “Whoops, heh heh, can I have those copies back?” You’re toast; you’re dead meat; you’ve had your head handed to you. …But the Web is changing this.”
One of the basic assumptions behind my developing thinking about writer’s block is that it happens differentially: that it happens in creative writing and in academic writing but, for some reason, not in business or journalism or email. And often these different experiences happen to the same people. This is a clue (I say) to what blocking is and to how we can start to manage it and make the Block Monster into a helper.
But what the Cluetrain guys are describing here (and correctly, I know, I’ve been there) is an illustration of what Ong said.
One of writing’s challenges is that once you print it in a book, once you give it to your boss, whatever, it’s beyond your control, it’s a part of you that people can judge and misjudge at their leisure, and every mistake will haunt you forever. How’s that for a monster lurking under your bed!
Their solution is the same one I’ve been trying here; rough out your thoughts on a web site, invite comments, feel free to revise before you go to press. Then, let people like it or not like it, at least you know you came as close as possible to doing it “right.”
Published on October 19, 2004 at 9:50 am. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/the-cluetrain-manifesto.html
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