Sometimes Writing is Tough
There are a lot of reasons for not writing – and people all over the Internet write about them and how to overcome them. In fact, one of the great “fall backs” when you don’t have anything to write about is writing about your difficulties.(Though I would never do anything so cheesy)
The problem is obvious – you get distracted, you get burned out, you get writer’s block, or sometimes you feel like you don’t have a new idea. But I realized recently that I sometimes have a different problem when I write here. I get paralyzed by the fear of writing something that is less than important.
AgentGenius has been the site of some really great discussions, and some of them were pretty weighty – and the site has broken some important real estate news, in fact I had the pleasure of doing that once and it rocked – I still remember the excitement of getting the news, typing the post, and knowing that we would be breaking out with it before any of the more traditional news sources. And with the bar set so high, it is often tough to write something more mundane because you feel the need to be outstanding.
It Doesn’t Need to be
Last week I participated in a twitversation with Jim Marks of Virtual Design. Jim asked a few people to take part in a twitter conversation which asked the question “What would you tell a REALTOR whi is new to blogging to help him/her write compelling copy?” The idea was crowdsourcing a Blog Post, and for 15 minutes, all of the participants gave their suggestions in 140 character bursts. A great idea, but not the point of this post (though it is a great thing to do if you have a problem finding a post content) One of the tweets from Kris Berg held an epiphany for me. “Don’t obsess. World peace doesn’t hinge on your post. (Now I am off to get a haircut. See? I’m not obsessing.)”
As the light went on in my mind, I felt a huge weight lift from my shoulders. No longer bearing the responsibility for World Peace, I was able to just sit down and write a post – hoping that it would be interesting to someone.
Oh yeah, there was a second tweet that reminded me of the “write” priority “Write about things you read, Write about what you think, Write about what you agree or disagree with, BUT WRITE!” The genius who helped me through that part of the process – (I blush) was me.
I guess sometimes you just need to remember what you already know. So get out there and just write something. You need to be part of the conversation if you want to have any input.
Loading ...
Consumerism, Geo-mapping columnist
Marketing columnist
Great post Bill – went through this very thing over the last month. I came to the exact same conclusion – just write. I had a vision of some extravagant market report that would have ended up so long no one would have gone past the first two or three paragraphs. When I realized my target audience was PROSPECTS – I condensed it dramatically and ended up knocking it out in no time. JUST WRITE.
Navy Chief, Navy Pride
Boy haven’t I learned that the hard way! It always strikes me as interesting that some blogs I thought would be very interesting to people get NO activity and others that were a whim are busy.
You just never know!
Great point. Just this morning I was thinking whether a post I’d written would be interesting enough to publish or not. And your post has given me the answer: I’ll be publishing it later today.
Let me add one more thing to the interesting points you rise: sometimes we think that something is not particularly important to be put in our blog, but it eventually turns out that some of our readers feel identified with it and enjoy it. Just for this reason it’s been worthwhile to write it, even if you initially had doubts.
Yeah, I’m still procrastinating on writing my very first blog post ever. Stage fright I guess. Thanks for the reminder that I don’t have to turn to the perfectionism monster every time I set out to try something new. If I did that I’d never do anything at all!
This is one of the best thoughts that I’ve read. Consistency is the key to blogging. I average about 1 per day (355 per year), and most of them are just basic or photos.
What I find interesting is it’s many of the veterans who are struggling with this these days.
Joe – Have I told you how much I appreciate your thoughtful comments and regular readership? If not, allow me to do that now. As you can see this was one of those “just do it” posts – glad it seems to have hit a chord…
Lesley; Always makes me scratch my head too – amazing how little we know about what people want to read – sometimes we’re just too busy “being legends in our own minds”. I did a quick post of phones a little while ago that got a ton of comments – and last night I was with a blogger who is very well known nationally who told me that they sometimes get fewer comments because their topics are often too intellectual – go figure…
Kelly; Glad if I got you to publish that post – I’ll bet it rocks!
IleenieWeenie – If you’ll email me whenever you get that post written – I would love to read it.. and I promise a comment
Matt – I am in awe – but you do have the key – people love content, and content is whatever you contribute whenver you contribute it – great job!
Mr Dalton my dear friend – so nice to see you – and I feel the issue , but maybe because we get in our own way.. thank goodness there are always friends around to help us get right!
Lucky for me with over 1500 posts on one blog alone I gave up on the idea that each would be OK a couple of years ago. With each post I think I have written my last word but by the next day I have some idea. If I could give some advice . . I probably wouldn’t. I suspect that writing a blog isn’t the same for everyone and we all have to find what works and when we do we can at least write something every day.
Thanks for the reminder and good advise Bill!
Hitting homers on a daily basis is draining in every sense of the word. Especially true when you learn that the majority of your posts are indeed, not homers.
Most hits are singles, and that works too.