Making connections
Writing can be a rather lonely pursuit most of the time. The writer needs to fully concentrate on the task at hand and spend many hours alone getting words down on paper (or at least on the hard-drive). Seminars and conferences are fine for mixing with other writers, publishers and agents. If a writer becomes a conference junkie, or tries to attend every seminar, workshop or festival there is often little time left for the real work of being a writer.
The real work of being a writer – is writing. There is no easy way out. To write a 100,000 word novel, the writer has to write down or type every word. There is no easy path to success. It is a hard slog, and can be very lonely.
Blogging can be different
Writing a blog can be a quite different. One of the delights I have discovered with blogging is the sense of community that develops. On my three blogs I have a very real sense of a community of readers developing as the weeks go by. More and more people are coming to visit, to revisit, to comment and even start up conversations with me via email.
Making Connections
It is the connections we make with one another via our blogs that fascinate and excite me. In recent days I have have the delight of two significant blogs making a link with this blog, and writing some flattering comments about my blog on their blogs.
My special thanks to Rick and Anne. (Sorry – the link to Rick’s site no longer works.)
Related links:
- The Golden Pencil – Anne Wayman – the Freelance Writer’s Resource.
Updated November 2013.
Activity or Productivity?
Chris on his blog The Qwertyrash Blogs asks the question: Are you Productive or Active? (Sorry – this link no longer works.)
…years ago, I learned that there is a difference between productivity and activity. Productivity either makes you money, or directly has the potential to. Anything else is activity.
In BlogLand, productivity is writing posts and promoting your site. I’ll let you say putting ads on it, but that’s all. All else is activity.
Reading other blogs, while important, will not bring in any money. Making comments and links, also important, may bring in some traffic, but in themselves will not bring income. Productivity is mainly gained through posting and promotion, claims Chris.
While I agree with Chris I would counter his argument to say that, for me, reading other blogs is still quite an important part of my day. I am still very much in a learning curve. Each day I learn more about this thing called blogging. It’s my apprenticeship stage in the craft.
Similarly, just over a decade ago when I started writing seriously I went to seminars, workshops, subscribed to writing magazines and read every book on writing I could get my hands on. That was my apprenticeship in writing. Now I have a fair handle on the craft I am very selective in what I read or the seminars I attend. With my writing I am now in the stage of applying all that learning.
Still, Chris has a good point. Sometimes we are so active doing related tasks we forget the important basic aspect of blogging. Activity is not productivity.
Updated November 2013.
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.
Four Habits of Success
The principles of success seem to have many common denominators. They seem to apply in many different endeavours in life. Applied diligently, they can make a huge difference to our lives, enhancing what we do, making how we do it easier and more meaningful and satisfying. If success comes as the world sees it, like wealth, prestige and fame, then that can be a bonus. If success means doing your best, being satisfied with a job well done and really feeling good about the outcomes, then the intrinsic value of these principles of success are incalculable.
Four Habits of Success
In his blog “Shards of Consciousness: Explorations of Personal Development” Richard Cockrum has written a series of thorough, thought provoking and lucid articles of various aspects of living life to the fullest. The piece of advice in this article that appealed to me as a writer and as a blogger was about staying balanced in life. Juggling all the demands in life is an art form many people fail to achieve. (Sorry – the link to Rick’s site no longer works.)
Stay balanced. Your vocation or avocation, including your blog, isn’t your entire life. You have relationships. You have other areas of life. To keep each of these fresh you need to make sure you spend time and energy on all of them. This doesn’t mean that you won’t have periods of focus only on one thing, but it does mean that these periods of high focus can’t become habitual. No one can effectively do the same thing day after day and hour after hour while expecting quality results.
The Demands of Writing
Writing in all of its forms, whether that be fiction, poetry, blogging, journalism or whatever, demands an intense focus. It is for many a lonely life, sitting at a computer for long hours at a stretch. Richard’s advice to “stay balanced” is very important. At present, my major focus apart from this blog on writing is my blog on birding. If I sit at my computer writing about birds all day it will become stale and unreadable. I need to bring balance to my life and actually get out there in field and watch some real, live birds. My writing then comes alive, not merely academic.
The writing also taps into a passion of mine – watching the beautiful birds we have here in Australia.
And the readers will be able to tell that I am passionate.
And they will return.
Updated November 2013.