I LOVE writing - I love WORDS.  I even have a BA in English Literature, for pete's sake.  So why do I always get to the "now write an article" stage and freeze?

I have had this problem from Day One, when I was being initiated into my Brave New World of affiliate marketing by PotPieGirl (thanks, PPG).  She taught me how to set up a Squidoo lens - great (I actually did two, I was feeling so clever) - how to put the content into them - fine - I did more or less everything she told me to do - except write any articles.  And of course I got no traffic.  Big disappointment, after all that effort, even though I knew it was my own fault (not PPG's!).

Then I discovered another path that actually got me onto the first page of Google (without quotes - 70,000 pages indexed) before I wrote a single article - Whew - I thought that was pretty cool because it got me off the hook of writing articles (I'm still excited about my rankings, actually, although it probably shows what a complete newbie I am, because I'm #4 on Google, #4 on Bing and #3 on Yahoo, all with a brand new PR0 website).   I'm getting quite a few hits a day from all over the world (and they're nearly doubling every month) - but I've only had a couple of sales.  STILL don't want to write any articles to drive traffic and build backlinks.  (Actually, I've thought about this since starting this post and I think the problem with non-conversions is probably the website itself - but the fact still remains that I could drive more traffic and get more backlinks - my lesson for future websites that possibly don't get so lucky first up.  But I digress - this post is to query/explore my fear of writing and submitting articles).

I joined WA and started the tutorials - and AGAIN I've stopped at the "now write an article" lesson.  For about 3 weeks now.  Maybe four.

One reason I can think of is my wretched perfectionism.  I've been exposed to so much GOOD (no, make that EXCELLENT) writing over my lifetime - literary classics - that I think I feel insignificant and inadequate with my writing.  It's as though I expect (or want) my articles to be literary masterpieces. 

Intellectually I know this is ridiculous - and everyone out there reassures me:  "Just do it - it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to have ingredients A, B & C".  I know - it's not rocket science.  Duh.  And I've read some pathetically-written articles that people (who aren't afraid) have published.

I also think that it could be that I'm still not comfortable with marketing as such.  I still seem to have this mindset that my article has to "sell" something, yet I also know that this is the worst way to write an article.  I am finding it difficult to find a mindset about marketing that I can identify with and that I'm comfortable with, because intellectually (again) I know that marketing is NOT selling.

(Funny thing - I've enjoyed writing this post, probably because I'm writing from my heart and I'm not marketing anything.  Can I use it as an article for anything? lol)

Aaaarrgghh!  What's wrong with me?  (and I feel like idiot for even posting this!)