Erin’s Departure and My Hiatus

I come to you this morning with a heavy heart.

Long time Staff Writer, Erin Moore, has resigned from her post on Puckett’s Pond and Call to the Pen. The demands of corporate America have gobbled up another chunk of her free time and have left her little time for her baseball writing pursuits.

Erin made her Twinkie Talk/Puckett’s Pond debut on April 7th, 2010 and proceeded to publish 145 articles in her time with us. Not only has she done a truly excellent job on this site, she has also been an asset to our network over the last 12 months and I have enjoyed working with her.

Josh, Steve and myself wish her the best of luck along all the paths she chooses going forward but we are definitely going to miss her presence around here. Naturally with all that said, she is welcome to return at any point in the future if her schedule allows for it.

In other news …

You may have noticed that I have been absent from the site since March 14th and have been less active than I had planned. So far this month I’ve published 11 times (not counting this) which is well short of the 1-1.5 article per day average which is my personal goal.

I’ll spare you the sordid details, but I have been juggling a bunch of different projects in my home and professional life that have consumed much of my free time. Beyond that, my remaining time has been spent being wiped out and unmotivated to do much of anything beyond simply “decompressing” at the end of each day.

Those things are contributing factors to my “hiatus” but they are not the primary cause given that I love to write and I usually find it to be a relaxing and invigorating process.

The main culprit when it comes to my lack of published content has been a case of writer’s block. This is something I’ve never experienced before – at least not to this degree – and I am having a hard time finding my bearings and am having a hard time getting back on track.

It’s certainly not due to a lack of ideas. I have plenty of potential topics/articles pop into my head everyday and – as you know – I have two series underway (2010 Debuts and Two for the Ages) plus the Puckett’s Pond prospect rankings to work on. The problem is that when I sit down to work on an article, I seem incapable of transferring my thoughts into a logical, coherent and quality article that I feel is worthy of being published. Even the two short pieces I published on March 14th were a struggle to produce and honestly I’m not particularly proud of either one of those.

Michael Engel (Kings of Kauffman), Nathaniel Stoltz (Call to the Pen) and John Parent (Motor City Bengals) have all been doing their best to help me break through my block with tips, suggestions and encouragement. It’s good to have friends like those three and thanks in part to them – and my ever supportive wife – I think I my brick-wall block is finally ready to be toppled.

As a result, tonight I plan on returning to my regular posting ways. If my block is still in place and pushing back, I’m going to break through and write something anyway. I’m hoping that in doing so, the content floodgates will open. Of course I’m also hoping that this piece has at least loosened the mortar.