Blank Page Syndrome and Falling trees

I’ve been wondering for a while now, do bloggers experience the Blank Page Syndrome the same way other writers do? It’s not easy to maintain a decent blog with quality content and frequent updates. Authors, journalists, columnists and bloggers all share a need to be sustainable in their work. Deadlines are very important even if they differ from one type of publisher to the other.

Writing a book requires months of work whereas magazines and newspapers have daily or weekly prints. Blogging and micro-blogging on the other hand have increased the pace and information has to be visible the minute after an event happened. But does it have to be like that? And what if you’re uninspired or have no valuable content to share?

You never know when to expect it to happen; the Blank Page Syndrome is indeed a tricky adversary, but there are precautionary measures one can take to keep it at bay. There are actually many blogs talking about it and I noticed it’s often connected with deadlines and a desire to start with a brilliant opening. With other words, the two main aspects are:

1. People need to have access to the information at a specific time
2. The content must be eye-catching

This brings me to one of Chris Brogan’s latest posts Audience is King. This post has one central thought that publishers have to realize their biggest value is in their audience and that content is molded for the audience's appreciation. It reminds me of the following question: If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to see it or hear it, will it make any sound?

The issue with blogs however, is that there are millions around and most of them have a very limited audience. Does it mean these falling trees are not nice to behold? Does this mean the blogger has no wish to continue writing?

This is where we get to the second question: If you hear the falling tree, do you actually enjoy it?

Each writer has a purpose, a mission. One can write thriller stories to frighten the readers, some writers may want to inform, while others yet only wish to share personal events. The way content is updated is based on the author’s mission and achieved value. A professional writer will seek to enlarge his audience in order to increase his status and commercial value. A teenager’s blog will focus more on what the person likes and experiences and is directed to a limited set of friends and family members. As a reader, what value do you get from each of these blogs?

This simply means that not unlike the falling tree, it’s all about the way you experience something and perceive this experience. You could say that each one of us is a forest with many falling trees, each one representing an action we undertake, a print we leave in life.

When you finally discover a new forest, because you were lucky enough to hear one of the falling trees, wouldn’t it be nice to know more about the forest and why or how his trees fall?
Is it a large forest with many trees that are slow to fall? Is it a bamboo forest that grows daily a thousand new trees? Or is it a very old forest with large and heavy trees that make a lot of noise when they fall?

Well, with this little tree falling I would like to share with you a secret – there is a way to know and it’s called a Zilhouette. The Zilhouette is like the outline of the forest, telling you more about the way it is perceived by other people that walked in there and saw its falling trees.

Starting now we will have more falling trees on the ZackBrandit blog. Don’t worry these are only virtual ones and we will use them to create new ripples while focusing on the value of the content. In order to explain you how our Zilhouette model works, we will present you other famous and less famous forests (bloggers) and show you how they can be perceived and understood by passersby.

This is not an easy task and we greatly appreciate your feedback!