I’ve been at this blog experiment for almost 11 months now and I’ll be honest, there are times when utter panic sets in.
Within my six-days-a-week writing schedule, anxiety over coming up with a topic takes hold about three times a week. Usually, after taking a pause and deep breath, sometimes walking away, the light bulb comes on—sometimes a really dim bulb—and the writing flows.
One of my greatest concerns about writing so frequently is that the content will become diluted or seem forced. And often it does.
When Word Nymph was born in March of last year, it was fun. It was new. The ideas and the writing flowed effortlessly. Today, I’ve sat here for hours, staring at a blank screen, having scoured newspapers, magazines, my bookcase, my imagination and all my online sources. Nada.
Just as my palms got clammy and my heart raced to a frightening clip, I remembered a blog post my cousin pointed me to earlier in the week. It made me feel better and worse at the same time.
This remarkable blogger, writing under the name of The Digital Cuttlefish, articulated graphically the challenges of keeping up with a daily blog. In a post entitled The Care and Feeding of Dragons, the writer first puts forth an unattributed quote: “A blog is like a dragon. You have to feed it all the time and sometimes you get burned.”
In the post, Mr. or Ms. Cuttlefish hit the nail on the head. Blogging is easy at first. But, like the dragon, this beast must be fed, preferably a meaty and steady diet, or it will eat you alive.
I took a tiny bit of comfort in Cuttlefish’s words because I no longer felt alone in my anxiety. Also, Cuttlefish put a face to my fear with this hungry dragon.
Once I finished reading the Dragon post and scrolled down to get a feel for Cuttlefish’s other writings, my jaw dropped. I could no longer put myself in the company of this blogger. Yes, he/she too posts about six days a week. But every post—every single post—is written in rhyme.
I must know: What does the Digital Cuttlefish eat for breakfast?
Upon waking this morning, I pulled my copy of The Cheese Course off the shelf. This book is mostly about the preparation of cheese dishes, but there’s an introductory section I found amusing. Author Janet Fletcher wrote in 2000 that “We Americans are clearly in the midst of a cheese revolution.” How did I miss that? Also, I’m fairly certain, if I were editing this book, that I’d have found a better place for the discussion about cutting the cheese than in the Cheese Etiquette section.
This said, I tread lightly into the language of wine. This might be because I have not been exposed to the business of wine.
Another batch of snow fell on us yesterday. Not a deal-breaker, by any means; just enough to ugly up the landscape and annoy commuters. The sun has been scarce for way too long and there’s a piercing chill in the air.
I looked up “doldrums” and was surprised to learn that it’s actually an oceanographic term. It seems that doldrums are regions of light ocean currents within the inter-tropical convergence zone near the equator. I didn’t know this. My husband, an oceanographer who specializes in ocean currents, didn’t either. I learned that the doldrums give rise to converging trade winds that produce clusters of convective thunderstorms.
I imagine tours of the nation’s Presidential libraries are full today, and there are events going on here in the nation’s capital to mark the holiday.
When people see my various “systems,” they often tell me I have too much time on my hands. Perhaps that’s because I’m so organized.
At the end of the final match, Watson had won $77,147, beating former champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, who racked up $24,000 $21,600, respectively. Because it was a special event, these amounts were jacked up to nice round numbers and donated to charity.
Word Nymph 
