Sandcurves

Guiding was an intense job, with a steep learning curve, and many things that I learned carried over significantly to my blogging. 

In February 1998, armed with some nature conservation knowledge and a heavy duty truck license I came to Namibia to begin the adventure of becoming a tour guide. 

Little did I know that twelve years, one wedding and two kids later, I'd still be involved with the whole industry. 

In that time I have done all sorts of guiding jobs, from big groups to private tours, from massive journeys to lodge guiding.  From the super rich guests to journalists on educationals.  From big companies to freelancing.  I've done lots of stuff, and its been interesting and [mostly] very enjoyable. 

The most significant guiding job I've had was working as a nature guide at a lodge, which I did in the Sossusvlei area for nearly 7 years.  I was involved in training around 25 guides to a varying degree.  Although I was in management for some of that time, I was always close to the guiding and still took the odd drive or walk myself. 

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While I'm editing the last bit of my next blog post, I came across this video by Darren from Problogger.net.  Darren chats about his blog posting workflow. 

I've been tweaking my own workflow and taking how I blog really seriously, and it is fun to see how some of the pros operate.  Check it out. 

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Do you sometimes have to write a blog post without much time to prepare?

I'll show you a way to write a fast blog post without the need to totally give up on cohesion and structure. 

Blogging convention - perhaps any form of writing convention - says that there is one way to write a good blog post … plan it in detail.  You need to craft your writing, according to this logic, slowly and methodically.  [Craft a Blog Post on Problogger.net].  While I agree, I also think there are times when a blog post, written fast, can be pretty good. 

If you follow the simple advice I'm going to give you here you'll go a long way towards beating two related things:  writing discipline and writer's block  You'll learn about my own workflow and some thoughts on why it works.  We'll chat about how you can take it and make it work for yourself. 

This blog post is rather full of good nuggets, but if you can't read it all, at least go down to the Per Post Page section. That bit has the most important blogging tips in the post and has made the biggest difference to the way I write. 

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In my last post I said that my next post would be "Solve your 'don't know what to write' problem forever", and I am still on track to put that out on Wednesday - it is a post I'm really looking forward to writing.  But sometimes I come across stuff that I think is relevant, and perhaps worth sharing.

For any blogger, the issue of creativity is a big one, especially if your blog is a front for a company, a way to get freelance work or somehow relates to how you make your money. 

This video is by Merlin Mann, someone I guess you are probably familiar with, and someone who's blog 43 Folders I love visiting.  The video is a little old, but I only saw it for the first time today, and it is certainly still very relevant. 

Read on...