Alphablogs

Nettie: Your Emotional Blog Advisor

Dear Nettie,

I’ve been wanting to start a blog for a long time now, but I am afraid to post anything. I find I’m quite shy and don’t want to be criticized for it. The thing is, I do want to share my writing. How do I get over this feeling of inadequacy and fear of exposure?

Waiting to hear from you,
Shy One

Dear Shy One,

first of all, thanks for coming out of your shell long enough to ask this question.

I noticed you didn’t sign your real name (that wasn’t you, Jennifer, was it?) It looks like it was okay with you to write and sign as “Shy One.” That’s a good first step.

So let’s do a few more baby steps. Why don’t you go over to WordPress and get yourself a blog name. shyone.wordpress.com/ is taken already (although they only had enough stamina for two posts, I see) but how about iwontbeshyforever.wordpress.com – that one is still available. There ya go, all you have to do is click on that link. It doesn’t commit you to anything.

Then take some time playing around. You can set the privacy settings so that no-one can see your blog for now. It’s just you and your pet iguana.

Talking about which. If you think it’s going to take you a long time to come out of your shy privacy shell, why don’t you have your iguana do the blogging? Okay, not really but you could say it’s your iguana writing; dogs do it, why not pet iguanas? If you’re a budding writer, it might even be an interesting challenge to write from your pet’s point of view.

Of course you can just have an ordinary anonymous blog. Lots of people do that. This guy’s been at it for almost five years now; seems to work for him! If you want to remain anonymous then …. wait, that’s another post, I think someone else was asking about that. Stay tuned.

After you’ve played around a bit and made the decision to come out of your privacy shell you can start making a decision whether you’d like to out yourself on that blog. Or you can do what many others do and start a second blog that does bear your name.

Well, Shy One, I hope that helped. And if you want to get over your shyness in other areas of your life, not just blogging, check this out.

Nettie

If you have a burning question or concern, send it right over to Nettie using the simple form on our Just Ask Nettie! page, or add it to the comments section below.

(Iguana image by MrClean1982)