THE ONE RULE OF BLOGGING
I think you'll agree with me when I say that keeping up with keeping a blog when you're working non-stop can sometimes be a demandingly oh-god-do-I-have-to-do-this-at-midnight kind of task. Reason why, I decided to tackle the problem in the following way.
STEP 1:
Split the blog posts. I'll be using a blogging 101 tactic to keep me going. I'll post one article at a time to keep me going. This is more of a self-help thing really. I'm just doing it to help me form a habit. But if you find it useful, use it. Here's the license key for it and it's totally free: justwrite500words. A little sense of humor can help...
STEP 2:
Carve out one hour every day to write. I'm talking to myself. Whether it's for the blog, or a fun Youtube project I'm (secretly...not so secretly anymore) working on, doesn't matter. Before I started photography, I was messing around with all these clips and making silly videos for my own amusement, as well as my girlfriend's at the time. I had lots of fun doing it and decided to learn Adobe Premiere Pro. It was so easy I wanted to face palm myself for procrastinating. Especially given all the free tutorials and accessible content online. Anyway, if you like Creative Live, use them, as they always have great deals. I learned a ton there! Things like keyboard shortcuts, masking, chroma keying, workflows, scaling, panning, sliding without a slider, and lots and lots of other really creative ways to tackle a problem.
RULE NUMBER 1: Do not talk about starting a blog!
Maybe it's because I read Fight Club a hundred times so the "Seven Rules of Fight Club" are forever engraved in my head. Or maybe it's Chuck's writing that scarred me so deeply - I mean that in the best way possible! And maybe you feel this way too, but usually what happens is a series of great, seductive, ideas which never get out of your head to ever meet the paper.
It seems that the better solution is to condition yourself by delegating an X amount of time, or if you prefer Y (because you're a male) to just sit down and write. No grammar. No syntax. No excuses.
Just write a five hundred word run on sentence.
Whatever it is, just keep doing it. According to studies, new habit formation only takes about sixty-six days. That’s just two months of your life that can take you from zero to a hundred in terms of productivity.
And you don’t have to start a blogging right away. You can just write pieces of would-be-blog-posts, save them on your computer, and later revisit and clean them up. Sometimes you can find little gems in there. Some half baked idea or thought that could easily turn up something wonderful. Just something to keep in mind.
The point is, to just start. The O.C.D. maintenance portion of it will wane with time.
Because doing feels much better than saying. Because action feels much better than inaction. Because if you have the writing bug, or any other (creative) bug, for that matter, it feels much better than anything else in the world. And you know it, because I know it you know it.
So just write.
And then, write some more.
Then, write with a purpose.
And let the world worry about the world worry about judging. Eventually, it will judge you too. But by then, you will be confident in your abilities. So, keep at it.
Don’t talk about writing.
Write.