How to be a successful blogger or writer – or whatever
I think I’ve said it before on this blog, the only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. Success in any endeavour is always the end result of work, hard work, sometimes incredibly hard work in overcoming difficulties and many set backs. People compliment me when I chair a meeting or I am MC* of a function or I speak in public saying how relaxed and confident I seem. This has not come easy for someone who was as shy and retiring as I was as a child. It has come through much effort, thought, planning and rehearsal.
A lifetime of effort
Blogging and writing is no different. It takes time and effort to be successful, long hours of seemingly fruitless, unrewarded effort. After a lifetime of writing endeavour I guess only a small fraction, perhaps as little as ten per cent of my writing has been published. Do I regret all that unpublished work? No way – it was my apprenticeship in the craft. And I’m still learning.
Sporting Success
Like so many other Australians, I enjoy watching all kinds of sports, especially those featuring Australians. The Aussies are fanatical about their sport and our success in sporting endeavour far exceeds normal expectations for a country of barely 21 million people. Many of my readers would be aware of the amazing achievements of Australian Olympic swimmer Ian Thorpe, one of the greatest of all time. He makes breaking world records look easy and effortless. When he retired recently he admitted that he could no longer face endless hours of training. To get to the standard of performance he displayed took a lifetime of effort, lap after lap, day after day, year after year. There is no such thing as overnight success – in any field.
Steven Bradbury and Blogging
In the recently announced honours list here on Australia Day, Winter Olympic Ice Skater Steven Bradbury received an award. What has this got to do with blogging? Plenty. Steven was the first Australian Gold Medallist in the Winter Olympics. The realisation of his dream seemed accidental, but it was no accident. I didn’t realise all the hard work, the difficulties, the setbacks and the injuries that Steven had endured in order to have crack at success. And in the end it all paid off. Writing and blogging, like speed skating, can be a lonely pursuit with many long hours of effort. That’s what it takes.
Links:
For a more comprehensive article about Steven Bradbury and how his story can help your blogging, writing or whatever read this inspiring article by Darren Rowse. It even includes a video of Bradbury winning the gold medal.
How Steven Bradbury can make you a better blogger by Darren Rowse.
*Master of Ceremonies
Turning a blog into a book
When I started out blogging some eighteen months ago it was just a bit of fun. I just wanted a web presence and to be able to share my love of birds (see my birding blog here).
After some time I realised, with heaps of encouragement from my son, that blogging can be a serious writing activity, not to mention income generating. Since that realisation dawned on me, I have treated blogging far more seriously. The income is still modest, but the trend is encouraging and the potential enormous.
In the early days I did not associate blogging with traditional book publication. I could see the potential of selling an e-book as an offshoot from one’s blog, but not a printed book. More recently, however, there have been enough examples of this happening with other writers that it becomes yet another potential income generating avenue.
At this stage this process is not for me but may well be sometime down the track. I am more interested in producing an e-book at some stage. There may be some of my readers who are interested in taking this road. If so, someone has already successfully gone down that track.
Gina Trapani on her blog Lifehacker has explained the process she went through to write, develop and convert her blog into a printed book through a traditional print publisher. Read how she did it: part 1 and part 2.
Thanks to Darren on ProBlogger for drawing these articles to his readers’ attention.
Writing Hint #20 Get rid of clutter
I have declared the year 2007 as The Year to Get Rid of Clutter.
I currently do most of my writing in a room that used to be my son’s bedroom. When he left for university and married a few years later we converted this room into our office. Previously a corner of our own bedroom was the office area. Over the last ten years this “new” office has been well used. And it shows.
The clutter is – well, to be really honest – disgusting. Some writing magazines and occasionally a newspaper will feature author’s writing rooms, with the said writer posed romantically at his or her desk being very productive. Often these rooms are lined with bookshelves and everything seems so neat and proper. I can guarantee that each one of them had weeks of warning before the photographer arrived. They always seem so productive and sterile. I can also guarantee that reality is far from this pretty picture.
I have decided to start getting rid of all the clutter in my office. This is my theory: get rid of all that clutter and that will free my mind and energy so that it can be channelled into more creative pursuits.
Like writing.
So last week I started in ernest. The first object of my enthusiasm was the 30cm high pile of bank statements, old accounts (I was pleased to find that all had been paid), notes, jottings, miscellaneous pieces of paper, the odd magazine and the like. Many were filed in the nearby filing cabinet (which sadly also needs my attention). Some were shredded. In fact, hundreds of sheets went through the poor little shredder.
The next object of my newly found cleanliness fetish was the bookshelf above my desk. I have a lineup of a dozen or so magazine boxes. They have been crammed to overflowing with old magazines. Why I was keeping all those writing magazines I do not know. I had read every one of them. Some were more than ten years old. In a crazy wave of renewed enthusiasm to get rid of clutter I threw most of them out. Well – they are currently in a big box ready to take to a paper recycling centre.
Some of these magazines I did keep. The most recent two or three. Those which featured some of my writing were also kept. (Note to self: build an archives shed out in the back of the garage.) I also trolled through some for interesting articles to pull out for rereading. Not too many. They will also be shredded if I don’t use them in the next few weeks.
The next centre of attention was the comfortable chair near my desk. It is used for reading (and snoozing in when I get tired). It was covered in books, newspapers, unread magazines, travel brochures, maps, more accounts waiting to be filed and… well, you get the picture.
Still to be done:
- Several boxes of assorted papers, folders, first drafts, correspondence and the like.
- A large pile of unread newspaper literary pages.
- A larger pile of unread literary, travel and nature magazines.
- A daunting gathering of unread books on the bookshelves behind my desk.
- An old, rarely used desktop PC that hasn’t been fired up for about six months. It dominates my desk; it needs to be archived too.
All this just makes me feel tired.
I think I need a little snooze – but my comfy chair still has a few things on it and there is no room on the floor.
Oh, the floor is cluttered too.
The importance of books
I was listening to local radio last week.
A guest speaker boldly announced, “I’ve just finished my seventeenth book.” He paused for the oohs and ahhs and congratulations to fade away before adding: “I enjoyed the experience so much I think I read another book sometime.”
Writers write – that’s a given principle.
I would like add that writers also read – voraciously.
Last year I read very few books. In fact, it was the fewest books I have read for four decades. (Yes – it’s a problem I have – I’ve kept a list of all the books I have read for over 40 years!) I try to finish two books a week; I’ve averaged over 92 per year for those 40 years. Last year I read only 25 books. (I did do an enormous amount of reading on the internet, however.) This year I plan to correct that and I’m already off to a flying start, on target to read over 100 books this year.
From time to time I’ll write about what I am reading.
In the meantime, what are you, my readers, reading? Leave your comments and insights below.
UPDATE: For a follow up article on this topic go to this new article: The importance of books – more comments.
I’ve been a little busy lately
No Comments »12th January, 2007; Category: The Writer's Life
It is time I gave a little apology.
Some readers of this blog have been commenting here recently without any response from me. That is not how it should be, nor is it my goal. It is just that I’ve been rather busy for the last four weeks. Many of the postings in that time were prepared well before Christmas last year and have been set to appear each day since. That is one of the wonderful things about WordPress – write, set the date, hit publish and forget.
The situation I’ve found myself in over the last four weeks is getting back to full time work on a temporary basis. I do occasional relief driving for a friend who runs a local courier business. Just before Christmas he had a major operation which resulted in an enforced four week holiday. The job involves working from very early every morning – about 7am and often does not finish until 10:30pm, with short breaks for lunch and dinner.
This has been a great challenge to me physically. Not only does the work involve long hours, it also means much heavy lifting and many kilometres of driving every day. One delivery alone several days ago tallied up to 550kg of freight. Fortunately, many deliveries are packages of less than a kilogram.
On top of the heaviness of the freight, the week before Christmas was incredibly busy, with the company’s busiest week ever. Layered on top of that has been the extreme heat we have experienced over the last few weeks, with temperatures frequently topping the 40C (104F) mark.
It will be a pleasant change to get back to writing again.