Sandcurves

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. 

The beginning - how to stop sucking

This is the first post in my project, "Crafting a Meaningful Blog", here on Sandcurves.  I wanted to take the approach of moving from getting your blog to stop sucking (not your blog, of course I'm talking about those other people), and progress to talking about building outstanding blogs towards the end (by the time I have that figured out for myself - with your help). 

We start the project by focusing on a simple concept - making content.  This is the starting point for one simple reason ~ CONTENT IS KING! 

If you write such good stuff that people are dying to read it, they will (if they find it…), but if they think your content sucks, no matter what else goes on in your blog - you will not have a meaningful blog, certainly not to those who read what you write. 

I'm not talking about SEO or money-making, though I believe that both of those follow right along with this concept.  Content is most certainly king to your readers!

Get some stuff

If you need content the super obvious first step is to actually come up with some stuff to write about.  We're talking basics here.  When you know what to write about, then we can talk about making your content good.  But that's the subject of at least a few future posts. 

Now, I have seen chats on forums and places like Yahoo! Answers where people say "What should I write about on my blog".  What???.  If you have nothing to write about in your chosen subject, or you have nothing to write about fullstop, DON'T BOTHER WITH BLOGGING, there are already millions of them out there. 

More than likely, you have a set range of subjects that your blog covers, you have some ideas, even a blog post or two that you are waiting until you have the right facts or the right mood, to write.  At least you have some passion or familiarity with your subject matter.  Perhaps you have to blog for your job as part of a marketing scheme, so you know the 'stuff', but you are finding it hard to come up with 'good stuff'.  Turning what you know into something that is readable.  If you start working on a post and it just doesn't flow.  Or if you have tried the 'keyword' approach and tried to be so SEO that you lost your blog's soul in the process.  You are the people who will benefit most from reading this material carefully and making your own system based on this kind of approach. 

Actually, read it carefully five times forward, and one time backwards, and then out loud…

Ritual

The first part of my advice is really simple, but powerful.  It is simple Pavlovian conditioning in your approach to blogging, writing, planning and brainstorming. 

I believe the psychology is fairly simple.  If you have a few steps that you constantly do each time you are going to blog, it tells your mind that you need to get into blogging mode. 

Here are seven things to keep in mind while crafting your blogging workflow ritual:

1. Make sure that each time you follow the ritual that you do actually blog.  If you end up doing "research" and wind up spending half your day surfing the web, well, your ritual isn't going to form the right habits, and developing healthy work habits are the whole point. 
2. Following the logic above, one thing not to include in your ritual is surfing the web. 
3. Get your freak on!  Make your ritual really ritualistic - however you best do that.  Think of it this way, you want to shock your brain out of whatever it was doing before, and get your focus on your blogging 100%.  Be creative, perhaps there is some music that does it for you, do you need to drink green tea, draw a picture, make swirls on a white-board, handstands - whatever.  Take your ritual really seriously, but have fun doing it - make it something you look forward to doing. 
4. Keep a bit of paper handy while you work.  When things come up in your mind, write them down and commit yourself to dealing with them later.  That way you can focus completely on getting into your work, and know that you will deal with that later.  [Note:  This is all part of the GTD way of doing things - I'll chat more about that in future posts.] 
5. When you start writing, write the first 100ish words fast, before doing any 'research'.  Do you see a pattern here? 
6. Write either on paper or a text editor [ah, Emacs], not in the blogging interface in your browser.  This relates to rules number two and six. 

Build yourself a blogging ritual that gets your head in the right place to write in a way that avoids distractions. 

Brain Hurl

Is that too vulgar?  Lets say "brainstorm with vigor".

Find some time you will not be disturbed, follow through with your pre-blogging ritual, but don't write a blog post - power brainstorm! 

Do it your way… by learning from my way.  This is one of the skills in this blog post that I have been practicing for years - I'd have to credit one of my teachers for teaching it to me originally, though I have adapted it for my use.  There was no internet (not that we know of), I'm old.

Get about three pieces of paper (A4 blank sheets), two pens, coffee or water, a big table, an alarm clock or kitchen timer and NO COMPUTER. 

Now, what is important here is that you capture ideas.  Don't be tempted to try to develop the ideas further.  Put down the minimal that you need and move on.  Write just enough that you'll be sure you understand it when you review the brainstorm later. 

Set a timer and follow through these three steps:

1. Write every possible blog topic idea you can until you loose momentum.
2. Then write down anything else relating to your blog you can think of, and keep doing it fast.
3. If you slow down to much with that, then move on to drawing doodles related to your blog.

Don't try to 'think', the emphasis is on writing.  Of course the above phase two and three are just there to help you perhaps muster up one or two more post ideas. 

Don't aim for details, just get the ideas captured, each one, as fast as possible.  Keep the fast pace going until your time is up. 

If you're like me, then the brainstorming session is good fun.  Where it gets un-fun is when you have to go through it and make sense of it, sort and organize, re-write the ideas in detail and so on.  That is hard work and not so creative, so don't do it!

All you want to do is to go through what you wrote and circle a number of good potential blog posts - perhaps 10 or 20 - you decide.  Don't choose anything that you don't think would make a good post, focus totally on what you are genuinely keen to write about. 

Just circle those ideas on the brainstorm paper and make sure that what you wrote was legible enough to make out later.  Done with that! 

Blog Bucket

Perhaps every pen in your office has its place and looks like a minimalist work of art.  Perhaps you are like that; not me! 

My office isn't that messy and part of my ritual is doing a bit of tidying, I find that it helps me get in the flow to have a tidy office.  But I have some heaps or places that remain messy and I don't bother to do much about it.  I have, literally, some little buckets on my desks that I toss various things into.  It is my pen jar, but so much more.  Flash drives, small screwdrivers, white-board markers, my camera cable for downloading pictures, and other odds and ends.  It's messy, but I know what's in there and when I need those things they had better be there there's trouble. 

But I have another capture device, my "post bucket" My post bucket is really one of those magazine holder things, which I prefer over a set of stacking trays (because there doesn't end up being a bottom tray that 'collects' junk). 

In typical Getting Things Done fashion, this is where you will 'capture' anything to do with your blog posts.  Your 'brain dump' papers go in here, and so does anything else relating to what you want to write about. 

I do keep some text files relating to each website under a 'working_on' folder on my computer (html and org mode files).  But the post bucket is my most important organizing and capturing place.  Anything to do with what you want to write about can go into here. 

Do it your way to suit how you organize yourself already and what you blog about.  If you write about cooking, perhaps you need a little tray that can hold notes in your kitchen, so you can scribble ideas as you cook.  If you are blogging for travel or something where you can't always write, perhaps you need one of those voice recording tools (or just do it with your phone).  You get the picture.  Get places to capture your blog fodder where you are going to be getting your inspiration from.  Make it fun and easy. 

Per Post Page

Again, you'll read about my system for per post planning pages to learn from and make your own. 

This has been the most useful bit of everything I have written about.  I personally rarely struggle with coming up with ideas of what to write about, I have lots of ideas.  But I do find that being well organized before you actually sit down to blog is immensely worth while. 

Alright, look at your brainstorm papers where you have ideas for blog posts circled and choose the one that sticks out the most to you.  Is there one you are looking forward to writing. 

Take a blank sheet of paper.  Put the blog post's title at the top.  Titles and headlines are important and I'll certainly talk about that somewhere along the line, but for now, if you want some advice, the best bit on headlines I have ever found is a series they did over at Copyblogger called Headline Writing Tips. 

[ Image by Vernon | License ]

Next, draw a line through the middle of the paper and call the bottom bit "Outline" as the header for the bottom part.  Make a small column called "Resource" on the right.  Here you'll list any links, books, quotes and anything you'll need later for getting your info and for giving credit where it is due.  The links don't need to be the full url, you could set up some system in your browser so that you could name the links when you bookmark them. 

The main top part is call 'Brainstorm'.  In the brainstorm section, put a few basic ideas for what you could say in the post, and any other ideas that could help you when it actually comes to writing the post.  Don't waste time here, you shouldn't need to spend more than five minutes - I think more like two.  Quick. 

The outline doesn't need much detail either - on some posts I don't even bother with it.  It is mainly if you want to remind yourself of some sort of order in which you want to present the material you'll cover. 

Do the whole process quickly and leave space to add stuff later.  I suggest you do about 4 to 6 of these the first time through, and try to maintain that number. 

When you do this exercises you'll probably get a flood of new ideas - just add them to your brainstorm paper or scribble them somewhere and toss them into your "POST BUCKET". 

Keep these half prepared posts in your "POST BUCKET" as well and spend some time daily, even just a few minutes; updating them, adding ideas, and occasionally scrapping one and re-doing it completely as your ideas change. 

Once you are rolling with this system make sure you stay ahead all the time.  If you write a blog post a day it may become a lot of effort, but it will be a lot easier than trying to write a post a day from a cold start. 

If you are aiming for two or three posts per week, like I am trying to do, then this system should work great for you.  I find that when I try to post daily, the system tends to go out the window.  Personally I would rather plan well and post slightly less, but that's just me.  I know the trend is now to post daily, but I think it just means that the web is just filling up with (pardon me) crap. 

Obviously you want to make sure that the next post you plan to write is organized before you do it, but don't worry to much.  Just having given it that much thought makes it really easy to write, you'll often find that you can write the post with little reference to these post pages - the process already put the stuff in your head. 

Brainstorm Again

Now, when you start to get board of the ideas you have, do another brainstorm session.  You'll come up with a whole lot of new ideas each time. 

This whole process is still very much a learning process for me - some of these ideas I have used for some time, some of it is just evolving now, but I find this workflow really effective and it makes blogging fun. 

Most importantly, it is a good step in the right direction of producing a meaningful blog!

Here is a post I found after reading this on planning your blog posts Planning your blog post topics ond www.chrisg.com.

Thoughts, ideas, similar workflows, I'd love to hear it.  Most of all, if you try it out with your own writing, I'd love your feedback. 

Next

This post was all about creating a system for your writing, but sometimes, despite your best efforts, things go wrong.  Perhaps your boss tells you to post something on the company blog at the spur of the moment, or you have a great idea you can't wait to blog about.  Or you went away on holiday, ate to much, and totally lost your focus.  In my next post I'll talk about some of the things to do if you are writing off the top of your head, and how to make some of those posts turn out okay.  Let's call it " Paint by numbers, post by templates" - just for fun, but there will be more to it than just templates. 

This weekend is my wedding anniversary and I would have posted on Saturday - so it will not be on Saturday for this post, perhaps Monday, we'll see. 

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