The first word — What I’ve learned from starting a blog
Oh, how often have I sat there and thought „Huh, maybe I should write a blog“. But until 8 months ago I never did. I’ve always struggled with turning my ideas into text. A couple of fortunate events then forced me to push through those blockages and do it. So this is a reflection of what I’ve learned in the process of starting a blog.
A blank sheet of paper, an empty word document — how often have I sat there, wanting to turn my ideas and thoughts into blog posts. Without a doubt, white paper still intimidates from time to time. While I still struggle with those blockages on occasion, I have to admit, that it has gotten significantly easier.
As a graphic designer and social media manager with a very strong visual approach, I have befriended white paper meant for drawing and sketches. The moment someone proposes a new concept or assignment, a flow of visual images and ideas is flooding through my head. I’ve always liked imagining new things and bringing ideas to life in a visual way. I’ve also been quite a big reader, especially fantasy books, where one can let their head run free while imagining mysterious and fantastic worlds. But writing a blog that’s centered around my work life and experience in the marketing field? Phew, that sounds like a challenge not so easy to tackle.
But I do like challenges, and that’s why this blog came to life. So these are the things that I’ve learned in the process of writing a blog.
It does get easier
I can remember when I had the challenge in front of me to write my first blog post ever. I think I sat there for hours not knowing what to write. And then when I pushed through the first couple of sentences, I questioned all of them and ended up deleting a big chunk of what I wrote. But I pushed through it and managed to finish the blog post. And now, after producing more textual content, both for my blog and university projects, than I ever have before, I do have to admit that it gets easier with every text I have to write. Words happen to come to my mind a lot easier, and I am a lot faster to finish the outline of blogposts.
Creating a workflow
Creating a writing workflow that helps me be as efficient and creative as possible made a huge difference for me. When writing a blog post or a text in general, I usually follow those three steps:
Step 1: Creating an outline:
Before I even start writing the actual blog post, I try to get a general draft of what ideas the blogpost should contain. What really helped me create an outline of the general theme was asking myself those questions:
- Why did I choose this topic?
- What value can I bring others with your blog posts?
- Why is this topic important for me?
- What do others say about this topic? Do I agree with them?
- If yes why? If no, why not?
By researching what other people say about a topic and answering those questions I generally get a very good idea about what I want to share. I always try to phrase the answer as detailed as possible, because those answers often already contain useful sentences, phrases, and ideas which I then later adapt to use in the blog post.
Step 2: 25 minutes non stop writing
Similar to the Pomodoro technique that I covered in my first blog post (here), if I already have a topic and a general idea of what I want to write, then set my timer to 25 minutes, start writing and I try to not stop at all costs. I repeat, DO NOT STOP. No matter if I lose my train of thoughts, no matter if a certain wort doesn’t come to my mind, no matter if the postman rings my doorbell. Okay, let’s make an exception for the postman. But besides that, just writing down every thought that enters my brain about my topic of choice, often gets me into the flow of writing.
And after the 25 minutes? I usually read through the text. Yes, there are usually some unfinished sentences, some weird word choices, but oftentimes there is a lot of concepts that can be useful for the blog post. I then delete what I don’t need and adapt what needs to be adapted. I usually repeat this exercise 2–4 times before I come to the final step:
Step 3: Adapting and proofreading
By now I usually have a solid text that just needs some love and a couple of adjustments. I read through the text and adapt what needs to be adapted and try to make everything cohesive. And then the blog post is ready to go!
Perfectionism kills creativity
I think we’ve heard of this topic a lot in the past couple of years. But in my opinion, it is definitely true, striving to produce perfect content really puts a huge block into ever publishing, writing, or creating something. So I trashed the idea that my content needs to be perfect and just write what I am passionate about.
And that’s where I am now. I have to admit, I did start to enjoy writing a little bit more this year. I would still consider myself more of a visual person, but seeing the writing block get smaller and smaller was definitely good to see, and even dare to say that I started to like writing. So I’m looking forward to sharing more of my ideas and experiences in the graphic design and social media field in the future.