Blogging can be a surprisingly isolating gig. I say “surprisingly” because the whole point of a blog is to put your ideas out into the world. You’re sharing yourself every time you hit “publish.”
Why, then, do we sometimes stare at a screen, feeling so alone?
Or stress out over the next idea: Is it any good? Will anyone care? Will anyone even read it?
Or wonder whether we should hit “delete” on what we’ve just written?
Can’t seem to connect with your readers? Maybe you’re too formal.
Formal has its place. (You should have seen some of the research papers I turned in when I went back to college in my late 40s.) But in a blog, “formal” writing can come off as stilted or forced.
How would that first paragraph have struck you if it had read like this:
If you cannot seem to connect with your readers, perhaps you are too formal.
When I spoke at the first-ever Financial Blogger Conference I noted the sin of “comma splicing” (among others). A couple of people approached me later to say they were guilty of committing a crime they didn’t know existed.
Go and sin no more, writers.
Comma splicing is the act of using a comma to join two independent clauses. Here’s an example* I saw recently: “Initially it appeared that things would be fine, the shop accepted my coupon and assured me the work would soon be completed.”
As the “Archer” character Lana would say: Noooooope!
Author and writing coach Jeff Goins recently posted an article about fear. The topic sprang from a webinar he conducted, in which many people revealed that fear was holding them back from achieving their dream goals.
News flash, right? Lots of people are afraid to try or, more to the point, afraid that they’ll fail.
Yet Goins — who has 100,000+ subscribers to his blog — went on to reveal two things:
He was scared to death when he set out to become a full-time writer, and
Two kinds of fear exist, one of which can help you.
Although I’ve been making a living with words for 31 years, I have never taken a writing class.
My print journalism career was in part on-the-job training, i.e., some freelance clips from The Philadelphia Inquirer helped me get a full-time newspaper job elsewhere. But what about my initial training — the place where I learned to write well enough for the Inky editors to run my work?
That would be ReadALot University, where I majored in autodidacticism.
An old-school piece of advice about how much jewelry is too much: “Wear a minimum of baubles – and before you leave for the party, remove one piece.”
The same is true with words. More of them won’t necessarily make your point. In fact, they might smother it. Don’t separate an idea from readers by surrounding it with words words words words words.
Put another way: Do you have friends who babble on and on or who constantly go off on tangents when they’re trying to tell a story? You try to follow them through the maze of verbiage and think, “Get on with it!”
Yesterday I walked to the post office for the first time in months, enjoying mild weather (39 degrees), a benevolent sun and just enough breeze to get my attention. The roads and sidewalks have been so icy that I’ve mostly been too timid to go outdoors.
For months I’ve been exercising by walking around and around in the house, which is kind of silly. But at least I’m moving – and thinking.
A writer I once knew told me she thinks “in walk tempo.” When she got writer’s block or needed new ideas, she knew better than to sit at a desk. Instead, she prowled the leafy suburban streets to jump-start her brain.
Apparently I think in walk tempo, too. When I hit dead ends or simply can’t stare at the screen another minute, I get up and get moving.
When I was three or four my parents discovered that I could read. No one had ever taught me phonics or even my ABCs. Somehow I just picked it up.
Another thing no one ever taught me: that I could be a writer one day. I figured that one out all by myself. Getting PAID to put words on paper? What an idea!
Despite very long odds (more on that another day), I’ve been making a living with words since 1984. The last eight years have mostly been Internet work, with a few magazine and newspaper assignments on the side.
