Blogging can make you a better writer
I haven’t written about blogging on this blog about writing for some time now. Of necessity my blogging activity has been rather limited over the last 12 months because of my studies. Getting my Master of Arts in Creative Writing has taken precedence over blogging. Despite that, my three blogs continue to tick along quite nicely.
In the previous 2 years I was blogging daily. In fact, I was almost a full time blogger, which kind of hindered my other writing. Writing an average of one article per blog per day over two years has had some interesting flow on effects on my general writing.
- I am now far more disciplined in my writing life, especially in the amount of writing done each day.
- I am far more productive, turning out far more words per day than ever before.
- I can write ‘on demand’ and rarely wait for inspiration. The act of writing generates its own inspiration and I can also write a lot faster with fewer mistakes.
- Searching for ideas for my writing is no longer a problem, because constant blogging generates a momentum of its own, with one article often generating many more.
- My writing skills have vastly improved. One of my lecturers commented many times that she can see that my blog writing has helped my other writing develop too.
- I have gained a great deal of satisfaction from the comments of readers and the interaction between readers.
There is no doubt in my mind that blogging can vastly improve your skills as a writer. I’m not the only one who thinks along these lines. Jenny Cromie has written an excellent article as a guest blogger on ProBlogger. It’s worth reading.
Good writing.
Aiming for the Stars: to Boldly Go Where no Blogger has Gone Before.
Aiming for the stars.
Now there’s a lofty goal. Aim high. If your aim is too low, you might just surprise yourself and hit the target, so aim high. I set high goals with my writing and my blogging, as well as many other aspects of my life.
Are Your Goals Measurable?
An important reminder about setting goals: they must be measurable. If I say “My goal is to be a better writer” that is not really a goal. How can it be measured? It is a worthy ambition indeed but not really a goal. If instead I said, “My goal is to write a post on my blog every day for a year,” I’m setting a measurable goal. At the end of the year I can test that goal and say, “Whoops. Only 23 posts – bit short on that goal!”
Take a Long Term View
Setting goals for today, this week and this month are important in many aspects of life. For the serious writer and blogger they are crucial. Without clearly defined short term goals I tend to mess around with this and that and don’t really achieve much. Staying focussed is all important. It gets things done.
Too often though, I get too focussed on the immediate, and don’t keep a big picture view in mind. I read somewhere many years ago that most people, when setting goals, vastly overestimate what they can achieve in a month, or a year, but vastly underestimate what they can achieve over five years. Writing and blogging are long term projects. You can’t write a best selling novel in a week (well most of us can’t). You can’t have successful blog in just a month. Take a long term view. Be in it for the long haul.
Group Writing Project
Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has us at it again. This week’s project is on developing goals for a blog. Two weeks ago many contributed to his challenge to write about The Habits of Highly Effective Blogging. I’ve had some interesting and worthwhile feedback from my contribution here on my birding site and also on some follow-up articles on this blog. I’ve been thinking seriously about my long term goals with my blogs (I currently have three – see the others here and here).
Where am I heading with these blogs?
What do I hope to achieve?
What stars am I aiming for?
My Stars – or the blogging goals I’d like to achieve by the end of 2008.
- Posts: To have written 1000 posts in each of my three blogs by the end of 2008.
- Income: To have a certain level of income (not for publication) per month by the end of 2008.
- Plan: To draw up a plan of what I want to blog about over the next three years.
- Comments: To respond to all genuine comments from my readers.
- Links: To make at least one link every week, more if possible.
- Read: To read at least three blogs of other bloggers every day.
- Community: To develop a community of loyal readers of my blogs by engaging them in conversations through comments, links and emails.
- Accountability: To be accountable to myself (through regular posts, links comments etc) and to my readers (through traffic and comments).
- Content: To write posts that will be of interest to my readers leading to increased traffic to and comments on my sites.
- Enjoyment: To maintain a sense of enjoyment through all of my writing.
Wait a minute, I hear you saying. You’ve broken your own rule about goals being measurable. Some of these goals will be hard to measure, so they will need to be refined, reworked and modified as I go along. I need some thinking time to work through the issues.