Advice That Will Keep You Blogging
When I quit my job to blog full-time, I ran across a lot of advice that amounted to don’t quit your day job. At the time, I stumbled across posts that ranged from”Signs Your Blog is Dead” to “How to Know When to Quit Blogging.” I started questioning if I was making the right decision. Determined to stay positive, I started seeking out sources that were blog-positive. In this post, I’ll be sharing what I read to keep me going when I got down about blogging.
Advice From Freelancers
All things considered, blogging as both a hobby and a career path is still a relatively new idea. I think that’s why advice on blogging still makes me scratch my head and think, “Oh really, you think that will work?” Worn out from the bad advice and blogs about blogging, I came across Virginia Sole-Smith’s series The Freelance Life. Virginia has about ten posts in the series covering topics from creating a business plan to profiles on fellow freelancers. This series made my goal of blogging full-time feel attainable. It also geared me as seeing my work as a business both on the blog and off the blog, which meant getting paid and knowing my worth. No more working for free.
Advice From Small Business Consultants
When I first started blogging, I read a lot of blogs about how to blog. However, this quickly got old when I realized it was the same advice on every blog. These days I tend to gravitate towards blogs for small businesses and entrepreneurs, which I find more fresh and encouraging. One blog I recommend is Sarah Von Bargen’s Small Business Blog. Sarah, who’s also a successful blogger, advises small businesses on how to get started setting up their online presence among many other things.
Here are some posts from Sarah that I think are great for bloggers:
Advice From Other Writers
Though I’m not a regular reader of XOJane, I stumbled across Mandy Stadtmiller’s article This is The Writing Advice That Changed My Life And the Way I Write–Forever a few months ago and it stuck with me. Mandy shares her top seven pieces of advice for writing. This piece of advice in particular helped me become more genuine in my writing online:
Ask yourself: Why do I really want to write this, and what do I really want to say?
If you are someone who puts a lot of pressure on yourself as many writers are, you are often working at a disadvantage to yourself with all that stultifying self-criticism, censorship and self-editing. For the first draft, don’t do that to yourself. That’s why there are second drafts — where you can go in as a butcher. You’ll be surprised at how much gold there is in the original first draft if you don’t kill it before it even has a chance to be born by overanalyzing it through the lens of your hypercritical ego.
I find that my writing is a lot better when I’m actually having fun, and I’m really enjoying the process. Sometimes it helps to know: The world will not end if I do not write this. So ask yourself . . . Why do I even want to write this in the first place?
Other Posts That Also Helped Me With Blogging
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