A while back I was asked to do a guest blog for the amwriting community. I put together an article comparing being a published writer for the first time to being a teacher for the first time. I enjoyed writing it, I assume some people enjoyed reading it (the comments were all good anyway) and it was clearly so successful that they asked me to come back and do another one… I agreed and was given a date when it was due to be posted.

Then I realised I did not have a blind thing I wanted to talk about.

Oh, I have ideas. A reasonable number of ideas. Every now and again I think of something and part of my brain pops up with a little note saying ‘You could do a blog post about that’. Recently, I have had thoughts about British Urban fantasy and what it means, the Christmas Number one phenomenon and how it seems to have turned into a battle between the X factor winner and whatever alternative and inappropriate tune we can think of (currently seems to be Nine Inch Nail’s Hurt), things I have noticed about Dr Who plots, things I have noticed about education and the teaching of history*, and many other subjects. Trouble is, the more I think about some of these ideas, the less interesting and novel they seem. I get less and less motivation to actually sit down and write about them.

So, yes, this is the ultimate irony – a blog post about how I cannot seem to write blog posts 🙂

Part of it is some form of quality control system in my brain which seems to be at work. Any idea is faced with a barrage of questions along the lines of ‘is this worthwhile?’ ‘Has anyone else ever written about this before?’ ‘Will anyone care enough to read?’ Now, for my own blog here these questions are often soon silenced. It’s my blog, I write what the hell I want, and if there are issues I am sure readers will let me know… However, when it is a guest blog for someone else, I often get greater angst about it. It is not my domain I am befouling with my stench, it is the domain of someone else. This adds a whole new level of concern about the relevance of what you are saying. The result is often me chickening out and posting another photo of a cute dog.

So, while I am still pondering the dilemma of what to write for #amwriting I would ask you, the readers of this, to answer me some questions:

– What subjects do you think I should talk about on this blog? Which posts have you liked the most?

– What current issues do you think face writers and/or readers which may be blog worthy for the #amwriting blog?

– If I were to post my PGCE essay on why History is an essential subject, would anyone bother to read it?

Answers on a comment form below, please 🙂

*That was one I had today, there was an article on Radio 4 about it and I once wrote an essay about how important History is as a subject. I may still blog about this one at some point… I may also still do a post on Nine Inch Nails and the Christmas number one at some point soon…