So here I am with a shiny new site, wondering what exactly I’m going to put into it. I’m sure you’ve been in this exact situation: a new site full of promise and expectation. It’s exciting and daunting. Invariably, doubts creep in.

“I don’t know what I’m going to write about,” you think. “And even if I did know what to write about, someone’s probably already written about exactly the same thing!”

And you know what? You’re right. Someone has almost certainly written about your exact subject, likely with the exact stance as you. Odds are that the person who wrote that piece/post/entry knew the subject better and is more qualified than you to have an opinion about it.

So why do we even bother? Why go through the effort and frustration of maintaining a site with such a pessamistic attitude?

Simple: it’s not what you say that really matters. It’s how you say it. No one is going to have exactly the same writing style as you, no one will use the same turn of phrase and analogies in quite the same way. Your writing is as distinctive as the way you speak and think (well, one would hope it is) and the tone you use when you write about something indicates who you are just as much as your choice of subject.

All we can do is hope that ‘tone’ is enough.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Personal Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.