Once upon a time I taught a writing seminar that focused on building several “pillar content” articles on a site. The attendees were a diverse bunch: out-of-work marketers wanting to learn new tech, start up owners wanting to break into the market, students wanting to refine their creative voice ahead of graduation.
As diverse as the group was, they had one thing in common: a desire to tell stories.
Blogging is rooted in art: the art of writing.
Writing Every Day
Most of us write something every day of the week. Aside from blog posts, you have emails, grocery lists, to-do lists, bill summaries, devotionals, etc. Take some time to reflect on how often you actually write something, however inconsequential, throughout the day. You might be surprised.
Writing something consequential every day is a bit more difficult.
You need inspiration. You need a topic. You need a thread of prose with which to weave.
Seasoned writers can whip up something spectacular every day with little to no preparation. But this kind of talent isn’t something inborn – it takes thousands of hours of practice to reach this stage.
As a new writer, you need to nurture discipline. You need to schedule time to sit each and every day and produce.
It doesn’t have to be Pulitzer-worthy. Just sit down and write something. Anything. Everything that comes to mind, every day and you’ll be closer to having the kind of mindset that will allow you to crank out publishable material every day.
Blogging Every Day
Anyone can publish a blog – that’s the beauty of the open source movement that makes WordPress possible. But not everyone can write quality work every day.
The cool thing: you don’t have to!
I have been blogging daily since the beginning of the year. I’ve also been writing daily – but not everything I write is published.
Instead, I often block out a few hours several times each week to comb through my various writings, determine which is the closest to being publication-worthy, and schedule articles in advance.
WordPress has the wonderful ability to schedule a post to be published in the future. An awesome plugin, Editorial Calendar, lets me keep track of when posts are going online so I can quickly fill up my schedule with new content.
I write every day. I also publish a blog every day – even if what I wrote that day wasn’t publishable.
How about you?
