Hi! I have writer’s block.

March 26, 2010 By

So let’s be clear that this is not really a blog post. At all.

I have lots of drafts of blog posts (I was going to hyperbolize and say “more than I can count,” but since WordPress counts them for me, that would be totally untrue).

I have a series planned on how to do teleclasses, everything from figuring out how to call a conference line to delivering the edited audio file. I know this would be useful to lots of people. Plus it would allow me to look quite expert-ish.

I have lots of WordPress plugins to describe and review, ones I use daily and recommend. Should be easy, right?

I’ve got several questions-from-the-mailbag posts partway written. So yeah, even that trick of “pretend you’re writing to one person who asked you a question you can totally answer” isn’t working. Because if writing a blog post that actually is a direct answer to one person’s specific question won’t do it, what will?

I’ve even got some hey-I’m-a-real-person quirky-moment post ideas, like my recipe for pancakes, funny things my kids said, and observations on caring for a diabetic cat.

Yet I am sitting here writing about not being able to write those things. I might as well be clutching my fevered brow while dramatically flinging my other arm wide and uttering a profound lament about the precariousness of the human condition.

Plus I have a lingering cold that is proving hard to get rid of. Sniff.

No lesson here. No tidy wrap-up. No provocative “your turn” questions. Just some words in a blank white space, and then clicking a blue button called “publish.”

And then I think I will go eat some cake.

Happy writer’s block, everyone!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: ,

This copywriting teleclass is not for me!

September 21, 2008 By

Wow…I just read a blog post about a free teleclass that promises to give me a method for increasing the number of website visitors who sign up for my list.

On the face of it, how could this not be a good idea? Sign me up!

Except that when I clicked the link to get to the signup page, two glaring problems presented themselves:

1. The blog post said the class was “this coming Wednesday,” but the teleclass registration page identified the date as September 23rd (no reference to day of week). Er, Wednesday is the 24th. Knowing which date is right would determine whether I can sign up…plus now I don’t trust the presenters because they didn’t get the dates straight.

2. The teleclass leader, who was billed as one of the Internet’s hottest copywriters (and hottest was underlined!), committed a cringeworthy grammatical error on his own sales page: He invited me to “join [name of blogger] and I for a teleclass…”

Um, no. Havi wrote about exactly this error recently, so it was quite funny to see a real-life example pop up so quickly. Her description of a writer’s reaction: Dead on.

Interesting to note that I still wrestled (for just a few teeny minutes) with the idea of signing up anyway, thinking that there might be good stuff if I could get past the, well, glaring problems of the sales page. Fortunately, I recognized that that was my fear of missing out (thanks fear, I appreciate that you’re looking out for me, but I’ll take it from here) and not anything specific to the teleclass.

And I got to NOT sign up! Because why sign up for something that doesn’t resonate completely with every fiber of my being?

And no, I’m not going to link to the real sales page or the real blog post. Why would I advertise this madness?

Filed Under: Real-Life Marketing Tagged With: ,