Blogging = Antidote to Business Plan Writer’s Block

This is a meta-blogging post to analyze how I can use the blogging forum as a means to overcome my writers block.

I’ve been "slogging" through the process of writing up my business plan. I’ve made quite a lot of progress, but I’ve hit a wall.

I then discovered something very interesting yesterday – that blogging can provide an interesting way to overcome my writer’s block.

BLOGGING WRITING STYLE
This business plan was going to be mailed out to a few key producers and funders. When you’re writing to a few people, then you try to make it as polished and perfect as possible.

But oddly enough, my writing style is much more open and flowing when I’m writing for the context of this blog. You’d think that I’d be even more of a perfectionist if the whole world is going to see it, but I tend to not be as concerned with misspellings and my thoughts can be much more disjointed.

WHAT DOES BLOGGING DO?
Blogging forces me to condense my thoughts down into a concise and punchy sound bite. My writing style is more open and flowing like a conversation.

Blogging is actually a great way to document my brainstorming of thoughts – it forces me to write down all of my thoughts so that I can organize them into groups and headings.

It also forces me to write it down, so that I can re-write it and clarify it.

It also forces me to discard the thoughts that don’t easily fit into the big picture. I tend to be very interested in all of the facts, but I can get lost in the trees and forget what forest I’m in. I guess that’s just my detail-oriented nature of being a Virgo.

PROOFREADING DILEMMA
Having the material polished and proofread has been the bottleneck to my writing progress. It takes a long time to get something that you write to the point where you feel comfortable in presenting to a specialized audience.

I was trying to write the summary of the product before I’ve had a chance to flesh out a lot of unanswered questions that have been floating around in my head.

I’ve been writing a section in my business plan only to go back re-write portions of it because I neglected to incorporate some important theme.

In this documentary project, I’m dealing with over 38 hours of interview footage and 5 months of television news coverage –obviously, I have a lot of different directions that I can take the project.

I purposely cast a wide net so that I would have a lot of flexibility in this stage, and this gives me a log of creative freedom. At the same time, it has to be focused and I have to have a clear vision for what I’m tryingg to accomplish.

There is going to be A LOT of issues that I won’t be able to include in the film. The good news is that a lot of the material that doesn’t make the film cut will be perfect candidates for the DVD extra features.

FOCUSING THE VISION
I’m in the stage of focus, focus, focus. The business plan is the bottleneck for me to create a strong foundation for moving the project forward.

I’m telling myself, "I have got to get the business plan done so that I can start soliciting a producer -- so after that, then I can secure funders who want to see that producer – so then I write a detailed treatment to provide to potential distributors -- so then I take that feedback and focus the project even more in the paper edit – so then I can start editing – so then...."

This loop of thinking increases the self-imposed pressure and decreases my level of creativity. It’s a nasty feedback loop that ultimately slows me down to the point of getting stuck with writer’s block.

BLOGGING EXPERIMENT
I’ve decided to try an experiment today – I’m going to blog about the topics that I want to incorporate into my business plan.

Here is my goal: To harness the blogging writing medium to film post-production:

I’m going to write a rough draft of my ideas in the form of separate blog entries, and then go back and reduce them down into summaries to include in my business plan.

Here are the steps that I will take to accomplish this:

* Brainstorm my ideas
* Write them in a context of a blog entry
* Post blog entry, and receive feedback from the larger user community
* Convert the blog entries and feedback into my the treatment for the film
* Manifest the treatment writings into the film through the editing process

This vision will initiate a flow for the project so that I can get out of the abstractions of my head. It’ll allow me to harness my creative energy towards something concrete that will keep the project moving forward.

Becoming a part of this co-creation community will provide a way for people to get more involved with the project in an emotionally engaging manner .

Here are the topics I hope to explore today in various blog entries:

* OPEN SOURCE
* MY BIASES
* LIMITED FRAMING OF ELECTORAL POLITICS
* MY STRUGGLESAND CRITICAL RISKS FOR THE PROJECT
* HARNESSING THE MARKETING POWER OF BLOGGING
* BRAINSTORMING OUTSOURCABLE POST-PRODUCTION TASKS
* SPIRITUALITY AND THIS PROJECT
* MORAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY APPLIED TO POLICITAL SOCIOLOGY
* DEBATE AS A FORM OF EDUCTION
* ADVISOR INSIGHTS