You may not know this, but I have been blogging since… well, before the word “blog” existed, about 1998 (all of those blogs have mysteriously vanished..aka they’re on floppies in a box somewhere and no computer has floppy drives anymore so I guess I will never read that shit again).
Many, many people make goals to start blogging. There are countless numbers of blogs that have 2-5 entries, spaced maybe a month apart, the last entry a year or two old. I actually have about 3 or 4 other blogs besides this one, although this is the only one I actually write in on a regular basis.
I admit that I am a writer. As in I’ve made attempts at writing novels (got to ~12,000 words on one once), and I have one currently floating around in my head, and quite simply, I love writing. Fiction, non-fiction, whatever. Love it. Am actually pretty decent at it (please don’t use this blog as an example, if anything it has made my writing style worse).
But what this blog has done for me as a writer is make it a habit. When something happens to me or I get an idea or I’m mulling over something, I automatically think, oh I should write about that in my blog. I actually think this about 6 times a day, but I try to trim that down to at most 2 entries a day, since most of those ideas are boring/weird/unrelated/not worth reading/writing about. I WANT to write, I think about it all the time, I have to hold myself back from it. I think part of the problem for some of the many, many people who desperately want to write blogs but for some reason cannot, is that they don’t really like writing. I mean, is blogging really writing? Yes, yes it is. Not necessarily artistic or well done or well thought out, but it is writing. If you do not like writing or think you’re a crappy writer, you probably will think of blogging as a chore. I like to use the term “writing” instead of “blogging”, because for some reason I think people think of those things as being different. They’re not.
Another key to constant writing is writing about something you are passionate about. As in you think about it all the time, you obsess over it, it’s always in your thoughts, and you could talk about it endlessly. You always have something topical to say. I have other blogs that I want to write in more, but I have a hard time keeping at it. I think a lot of it is that I’m just not as passionate about the topic as I am with biking. Cyclists seem to blog in droves. I think it’s because we’re a bunch of people very passionate about something, we have a tight-knit community who face-books each other, and many of us have tech-jobs or jobs that involve sitting in front of a computer all day long. You don’t plop down at your computer at the end of the day and say “ok, time to blog now…um…” Instead, you’ve been thinking about something, and realize “I should blog about this”, look over your shoulder to see if the boss is around, and go to.
It’s kind of like carrying a note book and pen with you where ever you go. In fact, if you’re someone who is out and about all day long, I would suggest this, if you really want to get into writing. This drives home that fact that “blogging” is really writing.
Starting to Blog
So how about that blog that I really want to write in, but tend to forget about/avoid? First, I should probably evaluate if I really WANT to write in it, and WHY. The answer to the first question is yes. The second? Well, I want to write about my profession, because I want to drive traffic to my website and have some kind of profressional authority in the topic. I want to help out people who are just getting into the field, I want to be a resource for information. I want to drive people to my portfolio, which still needs to be created.
So why haven’t I been writing? Well… it seems to be more like work. Sometimes I get into a flow and it comes easily, but writing tutorials (with examples) takes a lot more editing and thought then just blabbing on about whatever is floating through my head. I think part of it will be getting in to a habit of thinking about it and getting into the flow of it so I don’t feel guilty about not doing it (which causes me to avoid it). This will come from me sitting down for a certain amount of time every day and writing. Doesn’t have to be a long time, doesn’t have to result in a finished blog post, but something. Anything, even just editing something I wrote the day before. Keeping a blog, especially one that’s more then just babble (like this one), takes time. This is more of a journal. I want something that’s more like a column.
This entire post may seem somewhat off-topic, given that this isn’t a blog about writing. But, the fact is, this is my defacto journal (yes, I do think about cycling 99% of the day), and I can’t very well blog about not blogging in my empty blog…huh!? yeah, exactly.
I totally do that…think of things during the day that I want to blog about. However by the end of a work day, I usually want to be off the computer! I used to love writing way back in grade school though, and now I love blogging.
I suck and hate writing but bloggin isn’t writing since I’m not really being “graded”. I figure it was an easy way to keep a training diary that I can go back and learn from but I try to also include other stuff because it seems my friends back in Oregon use it to “keep in touch” which is cool.
Great topic btw!!
>I’m not really being “graded”
This is why school often ruins people’s passions in life, especially writing. People associate it with grades and reports and horrible books no one would ever read on their own time… blogging like this is a lot like journaling, which is a very valid form of writing. Many people turn their journals into books–in fact I know a few people have turned their blogs into books. Not to say you ever have to do that, but I bet when you were in school, you never thought you’d be writing every day on your own, and *enjoying* it.