Write Write Write
One of the most helpful tips I’ve discovered during the litany of writing courses I’ve undertaken is to write every day. Even if you’re not writing what you’re supposed to be writing (uh, yeah, about those uni assignments . . . ) writing anything can help.
The same goes for your blog. I’m not suggesting you post every day, unless you want to, but writing every day is a must.
I call it motivation momentum. When you’re writing every day, you’re motivated to write every day. You don’t fall out of the groove. How many blogs have you noticed with reduced posts these days? Yes, mine included. People took time off “writing” over Christmas and are now struggling to get back their motivation momentum.
I can sit and stare at my blog for days, watching my stats diminish by the hour, knowing that if I just wrote a post they would go back up. After a few days I throw one together and my stats rise – briefly. Then they go back down, and I’m back to square one. Clearly stats aren’t why I started my blog. I started my blog to help me focus on writing every day. The positive stats flow from that.
This desire for motivation momentum helps explain the popularity of such insanity as NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo as people struggle to gain momentum on their own. And for November I write furiously. In fact last November I wrote some 70,000 words including 3 university assignments, a 50,000 word novel and some 19 blog posts. Most days I wrote for five hours a day. At least 2 a day.
But where is this momentum now? I lost it somewhere around Christmas. The tempting distractions of shopping, parties and friends proved too much for me and now while I can sit at a computer for hours a day, my writing is virtually zero. I wrote 14 blog posts in January. Less in February. My average last year was between 20 and 25 posts a month. And here I am writing less than half that. I’ve lost my momentum.
This doesn’t just apply for writing. I lost my exercise momentum as well, somewhere around uni exams last year I stopped going to the pool to study, and never went back.
What about you? Have you lost your motivation momentum when it comes to writing, your blog, or some other part of your life? How do you get it back?
I love honesty of your post Kin! It is easy to lose momentum once you stop. I struggled early in January with blog posts. I sat down and spent a few hours writing a blog plan for the next three months. It has really helped now that I have much less time on line – I have one writing session a week and find that once I get going I can get some rhythm and turn out 3 posts pretty quickly.
Love that! ‘motivation momentum’. I am writing almost every day of the week – mostly for business but I reserve Fridays for creative writing and often pre-publish posts on some of my blogs for the following week.
I did go through a slump recently. Not because of the time of year but more because of family matters in my life that forced my attention elsewhere. But I am getting back on track now.
When I’m in my normal writing mode I probably average 20 or more per month but that is to more than one blog.
Finishing things off seems to be my momentum problem right now…. like the post for this blog that’s half written and just won’t finish itself!!!! Still waiting for someone to invent a REAL roundtoit.
Writing is like anything else really. You have to be persistent no matter what you do and you will succeed.
Writing a post is one of the most aspect for success of any blog. Kin you have made a good point telling how important it is blog frequently.
First of all search engines robots love blogs who updates their contents daily and they give frequent visits to such blogs. Its a great debate how often we should post. For new blogs its more advisable to write post often so they could have maximum posts indexed and get some organic traffic. But its not easy to post daily, especially if a blog has only one author or contributor. Good to see this blog has so many contributors. Thanks for sharing this info. Good luck.