Last week, I shared my frustration with my writing, especially in the context of my own blog. This past week, I’ve continued to think a lot about not just what…

“Sensory overload.” We’ve all heard that phrase. It has become a cliched part of our vernacular. For instance, when deadlines and activities at work start to make us feel frazzled, we tell our colleagues, half-jokingly, “I can’t hang in. I’m on sensory overload here.”

The phenomenon is being studied by the experts and every day, it seems, there is another news story about the impact that technology and all of the communicative devices we use every day are having upon us. We are all connected to each other perpetually through our cell phones, blackberries, computers, etc. But are we really connecting with other human beings in a meaningful fashion or just superficially? That’s a question for the sociologists to answer in years to come.

For me, the question has become, am I really connected with my internal self? Some days the honest answer is “no.”

Since I broached the topic of pet peeves last week . . . A couple of days ago, I had a fairly appalling experience. A well-educated, articulate member of my…

We all make mistakes. But if you want me to answer you, don’t ever call me “Jane.” And if you address or refer to me as such in any written…

I really enjoyed reading your responses to my post last week, “What would you do?” I promised that I would tell you this week how I handled the situation. Here’s…

School is out for the summer and my youngest son’s report card is posted on the front of the refrigerator. I can at long last write here about something that…

Do you remember Night Shift, a film starring Henry Winkler and Michael Keaton? There were a couple of scenes in which Keaton’s character drives Winkler’s to distraction by incessantly talking…

I attended a writing course recently and was introduced to a concept that is not new, but was certainly new to me: Mind-mapping. I grew up in the age of…

What is the most difficult and challenging aspect of your job? For many people who are required, as part of their professional responsibilities, to draft coherent written reports, summaries, memoranda…

We’ve all had the unfortunate experience of being an audience member when a speaker is struggling to get through his/her presentation or, worse, doesn’t realize that he/she has lost the…

Any form of writing requires discipline. It requires devoting yourself to the task, setting aside a time and place to do it, and making a commitment to work diligently at…

Last week I explored the issue of maintaining balance in one’s life, pondering how anyone could possibly maintain multiple blogs while doing justice to their remaining responsibilities. I planned to…

I’m baffled. Stumped. I admit it. I like to visit blogs. I enjoy reading other folks’ writing because I learn from their observations, experiences, and insights. I love seeing the…

I have had some collaborative experiences recently that have made me think anew about having one’s writing critiqued and edited, and how it can be a highly beneficial, albeit painful,…

This past week I’ve been thinking about what it means to be “a writer” and the notion that there are “real” writers as opposed to . . . ? Many…

I stumbled upon an extremely well-written and informative article this week: 10 Tips on Writing the Living Web, by Mark Bernstein, which I encourage you to read in its entirety. Continuing to think about the topic I have focused upon the past couple of weeks, why so many folks are blogging these days, I was fascinated by his very first suggestion: “Write for a Reason.” He admonishes us to write not just about the mundane details of our lives and life experiences, but about why those details matter. Perhaps most importantly, he reminds us to write honestly and “for yourself; you are, in the end, your most important reader.”

Another recommendation that resonated with me is “[r]ead widely and well, on the web and off, and in your web writing take special care to acknowledge the good work and good ideas of other writers.” When I signed on this evening to write this post, I perused the past week’s entries from my colleagues here at Write Stuff, as is my custom. I was intrigued to find that, once again, my teammates and I seem to be “in synch.” d.challener wrote in his March 6, 2007, post, “The Need to Read,” that he has been, of late, in the “longest creative reading droughts of my adult life. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to read. It just seems that over the last several months my traditional reading times have dried up.”

I concur with Karen’s enthusiastic endorsement of Writer’s Digest. The insightful articles they publish always cause me to think in a new way about why I enjoy writing so much and how I might improve my written products.

Currently, in a feature entitled “Becoming Intimate with Your Own Creative Impulses,” author Julia Cameron is interviewed. After publishing my post last Sunday about why so many of us are spending significant amounts of time and effort blogging, I was particularly intrigued by her explanation of why she writes:

For me, writing is a way to metabolize life. It’s a way to make life more understandable, it’s a way to make life more comfortable, it’s a way to make life more interesting. It’s a way to make life more passionate. When I picture the writing life, what I’m talking about is a life where writing is your dominant response. People can learn to do that. They can learn when they have their feelings hurt to get on the page instead of on the telephone. They can learn to keep a notebook next to them and write when they’re in gridlock traffic.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking about this question: Why blog?

With an estimated 55 million blogs now on-line, it seems reasonable to ask why so many people are engaging in this activity. And, more importantly, why so many bloggers comment, facetiously or not, that they are “addicted” or “obsessed” with blogging, can’t live without it, and regularly confess that they are “spending way too much time blogging.” Many writers joke about their laundry piles, dusty furniture and dirty hair, and acknowledge eating fast food because they are too busy blogging to cook. Only those writers (and their families) know for sure, of course, how much truth is actually being divulged.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the incongruence between the amount of writing you want to do and the amount you are actually completing?

That’s how I’m feeling right now. I have several weeks’ worth of posts rolling around in the big empty cavern known as my brain. But I’m having trouble getting them out of my head and onto the computer screen.

Is it possible to suffer from “writer’s overload”?