I’m sitting here on the east coast getting ready for the first show of this week’s tour.  But it’s blog day and I’m having a terrible time coming up with something to write about.

Here’s the thing… I like performing and I like expressing myself.  But putting those expressions into the form of a song/joke/script/video is a drag.  I love the finished product.  Moreover, I love that it’s mine.  So that excludes letting other people do it for me.  I just sometimes wish I could leave my brain in front of the computer to get it done while I watch Scooby Doo.

I can sit and write gibberish all day.  It’s that formulation part that gets tricky.  There’s ideas in notebooks and on scraps of paper all over my office.  But I’ve always been a starter and less good at being a finisher.  It’s always a push to keep myself interested in an idea long enough to finish it.  Which is why I’m not as prolific as I’d like to be.  A couple songs a year.  4 or 5 comedy bits.  If it makes it to the stage, it means it was interesting and high quality enough to keep my attention for a long period of time.  Others may disagree about the interest and quality. 🙂

And I’ve often heard writers of all disciplines say they hardest/worst part of their job is the writing.  So today I decided to cyber-commiserate with fellow writers about the pain and precision of crafting the perfect set of words.

http://www.allycarter.com/2008/12/why-writing-is-hard.html – Ally Carter dishes on the art of REALLY finishing a book

http://johnaugust.com/archives/2003/writing-is-hard – John August on how a crappy screenplay becomes a good one.

http://www.robynamos.com/archives/000044.html – Robyn Amos on the writer’s tendency to do anything else but write.  I guess that includes writing about not being able to write. 🙂

Gotta go tell some jokes and sing some songs now. 🙂

Phil Johnson
www.RoadsideAttraction.com

PS… Did you get your 8 free Roadside Attraction MP3s yet?
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