Sometime last week, we went out to meet some of my husband’s colleagues. We met for dinner and after the usual exchange of pleasantries, the conversation became focused on me. Being pregnant and all, there’s no way for me to avoid the spotlight every time we meet friends, but I completely understand that it’s normal for our friends to be curious about my health and my baby.

Anyway… they also asked me about my work. They know that I am a teacher, but they didn’t know that I already quit teaching. So I told them that I am no longer teaching since December because I had a lot of difficulties during the first four months of my pregnancy. Then they asked me what keeps me busy when my husband is at work, so I told them that I work at home. I regretted saying that right after I saw their interest. They were genuinely interested and there’s nothing wrong with that, but the thing is… I really don’t know how to define what I do exactly. They asked me what kind of job I do at home, so I told them I write. One of them said, “Wow, you are a writer!”

And that’s when it became a little bit uncomfortable for me.

You see, I think it’s not right to call myself a writer—maybe a frustrated writer but not a writer. I mean I don’t even care editing my own blog entries. I don’t get fussy over a missed punctuation or a sentence that does not sound 100% right.

Of course, it is a bit different if I am writing for clients but even so, it is still so tacky to call myself a writer. Maybe it’s because that word is just so broad. A writer can be a novelist, a journalist, a copywriter, a scriptwriter, a columnist, and others but I am not any of those. I am a personal blogger and I am not really sure if a blogger can be considered a writer? Because if it is so; everybody can be called a writer.

So anyway, I immediately corrected the one who called me a writer. I explained to him that I do write all sorts of articles, but what I do is really nothing close to what he’s imagining. I told him that I write for websites, and the kind of writing I do depends on the website and the client I am working for; meaning, it does not always have to be high-quality writing. Now before you, my fellow bloggers, throw tomatoes at me, you have to admit that some clients just want sentences thrown in together to hide their keywords. Some clients just want search engine feeders. I don’t know about you, but I won’t call that high-end writing.

So next time somebody ask me what I do, I decided to say, I provide written contents for websites. I think that’s the right (and humblest) way to name what I do.

To state the obvious, I have not written a single entry for a month and I am sorry for that. ViennaLopez.com along with Blogleafs.com have encountered a bit of a problem sometime last month but everything is back up and perfectly working again. Okay, that is not the reason why I failed to write for more than a month and if you would continue to read, you’ll learn that it is more than technical problems.

Matters stopping me from writing entries

1. I cannot find a good theme. I want this blog to be different from my other blogs. I’ve got too many blogs that are about my personal life already and I want this blog to focus on something other than myself. I want to post articles that could be of help not only to me for but to YOU (this blog’s readers) as well. From the very start, I always wanted this blog to be informative, entertaining, and inspiring so I put so much consideration in what I write here.

2. I have read/heard about it before. Sometimes when a good theme hit me, I normally spend some time thinking of how to write it only to decide not to write about it in the end. Why? Because I usually get the feeling that I have read it before. Though writing about a topic which was already written about by others is not considered copying, repeating a topic makes me feel ineffectual, imitative, and ineffective.

3. I feel insecure. I worry that readers will not appreciate what I write.

4. I don’t have enough time. I run six blogs so you can imagine how much work I have to do in a day to maintain all these blogs and since I want only the best to be published in this blog, posts doesn’t come too often.

I know it is mainly about feeling uncreative. I have contemplated about it for weeks and afterwards decided to shun my reluctance away. That’s right. Posts in this blog will come in a regular basis from now on. Topics will be about anything that I deem worthy of being written whether they’re written about by others already. Of course, I’ll still try to write interesting topics for you but I will not beat myself up thinking whether you like my post or not. I’ll leave it to you to speak up, to tell me why you like or don’t like my post or why you disagree with this blog’s contents. There’s the comment box for that.

And for new (or not-so-new) writers who find themselves in the same situation, here is an advice. Just by living your life, you already have accumulated knowledge about a variety of topics. Think about of subjects you already have some experience with and use that experience to develop articles. Don’t try so hard to write profound articles you have little knowledge about. If you are a mom, write about housekeeping or about taking care of your kids. Who knows, you might be helping other moms by sharing your experience. If you are a storekeeper, share that funny thing that just happened during your day at work. I can continue with the list but I think you got my point but just to stress it, I’ll put it this way—you can be creative just by being yourself.