It’s going to happen.
The passion you felt when your blog was new will cool. You’ll get busy. You’ll have a major story deadline. You’ll go on vacation. You’ll get married, have an accident or a baby, get a bike, a dog, a different job or a new hobby.
Whatever the reason, you’ll hit a wall. You’ll wake up one morning and think, “Not today, I can’t do it today.”
Welcome to blogging burnout.
If you’ve blogged for any length of time, you’ve been there.
By late last week, as the 2010 WordCount Blogathon approached the half-way point, a lot of participants were talking about how tired they were – of writing, their blogs, of blogging in general – in posts, comments on Twitter and the Blogathon Google Group we started.
As with any relationship, it’s no surprise that the early heat you felt died down after the newness of checking your blog stats every day wore off and the reality set in that, for better or worse, you were in a committed relationship.
So what to do? You could decide blogging wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and post only when you feel like it, or abandon it altogether. After all, reasons for starting a blog vary from person to person. If it was to learn a skill so you could market yourself as a blogger and you accomplished that goal, maybe you don’t need your own blog anymore. Maybe you were using it as an online diary to work through a troubled patch of life or work that’s now passed.
But if you’ve decided for business or personal reasons you want to keep it up on a regular basis, you need to figure out how to rekindle the flame.
Talking to other writers and based on what’s worked for me, I’ve come up with 10 sure cures for blogging burnout. If you’ve got a go-to solution for beating the blogging blues, please share it in the comments so other burnt-out bloggers can learn from your experience.
1. Put ideas in drafts mode – When you get inspired for a post, create a draft in WordPress or whatever blogging software you use and write down whatever it was that came to you. Do it a lot and before you know it you have a bunch of ideas that you can add to and tinker with one’s ready to be done and turned into a post.
2. Pre-write at least a day in advance, more if you can manage it – With one or two exceptions, I’ve pre-written every post for the past three weeks. It’s amazing how much less stressed I feel getting up in the morning knowing that the day’s post is already done.
3. Plan a week’s worth of posts at a time, more if you can – Before the blogathon started, I created a calendar and charted what I was going to write for the better part of six weeks: one week before the blogathon, the month of May and a week’s worth of wrap up after. I haven’t ever done that before and it’s working well. I’ve decided I’m going to try blocking out a month’s worth of posts from now on – giving myself room to change subjects if something comes up in the news I want to tackle right away. I started a twice a weekly paid blogging gig in April for SecondAct.com and realize I need to plan ahead for that one too or it saps too much mental energy during the week.
4. Use theme days – The only way I can blog and be the head blogathon cheerleader is by careful programming, running the same type of content certain days of the week. Friday’s it’s a list of recommended reading for writers I happened upon that week. Saturday’s is my Around the Blogathon round up of interesting posts by other blogathoners. Sunday’s I’m doing a Best of WordCount, and running links to 4 to 6 older posts that revolve around a single subject. On Mother’s Day it was juggling work and life. Yesterday it was a list of posts about writers on writing. Knowing in advance what’s coming up I do a better job of keeping an eye out for material, and when I see it, I create a new post in draft mode to save it.
5. Write when your energy’s up – I’m a morning person. I love getting up at 5 or 6 a.m. and getting my blog writing out of the way for the day. Somehow writing when I’m “on” doesn’t feel so hard.
6. Find friends to swap posts with – Funny how helping clean up after dinner at someone else’s house isn’t the chore it is at your own. The same holds for blogging. Invite someone to write a guest post and offer to do the same for them. Unless their blog covers the same exact subject as yours, you’ll likely be writing about something different from your usual or taking a fresh approach to familiar territory. Either way, the newness of the situation will put the pep back into your writing.
7. Run a Q&A, list, poem, photo, poll, video clip or other snippet of something – Posts don’t have to be linear or even written. They could be anything that tells a story, including a photo essay of someplace you’ve been, a video clip of something funny related to your blog or a piece of writing you did long ago but never published – what better venue to help show it the light of day. Readers like variety, use it to your advantage.
8. Keep it short and sweet – Thanks to Twitter, haiku’s made a comeback. A three-line post – why not?
9. Use your comment on someone else’s blog post as the basis for a post – I find commenting on other people’s blogs sparks ideas for things I could write on my own. I’ve gone so far as copying a comment I left on a blog and pasting it into a new draft on WordPress. In fact, this post was inspired by Katie Jett Walls’ Creative exhaustion post on her blog One/Week. If you read my comment on her post, you’ll see it includes the kernel of this one. I left it Friday evening, thought about it over night, went back the next day and copied what I’d written to start this post.
10. Give yourself a break – If you’ve committed to blogging 7 days a week, pre-write posts to cover the weekend so even though the material on your blog will be new, you can enjoy some much deserved time off.
Now it’s your time to share – when your passion for blogging runs low, what techniques or tricks do you use to keep the love alive?
I love this post! So many great suggestions. As someone with a background in creative writing, I like to turn my blog posts about new/social media into creative writing challenges. I think, “How could I write this post in a new way? Could it be a poem or a short story?” I’ve written poems about Facebook, haikus about Twitter spam, and horror stories about Facebook’s new privacy policy. Sometimes, I feel ridiculous while writing these things, but they are usually crowd-pleasing posts. Thanks again!
Laryssa: Great ideas – would love to see links to the posts you mentioned.
Michelle
Your first tip is my favorite. I do that all the time. I’ll often get post ideas or specific titles will pop into my head, but I don’t have time to write the post right then and there, or I don’t feel like the timing is right. So I create a draft, plug in the title, and either jot some notes or just put some filler text. then I save it and go back to it when I can. It’s definitely helpful when I don’t have ideas but I want to put a blog post together… the brainstorming’s already done.
I do it so much that I have – and I just checked – 123 posts in drafts mode right now. Granted, some of them will never see the light of day. But I’ve got a whole series on writing basics waiting for me to get to as well as a bunch of posts for the blogathon. When I first started blogging I’d write blog post ideas in my journal. Now I just use WordPress.
Michelle
Here are links to some of the posts I mentioned in my previous comment:
“Two Twitter Trending Topic Poems” http://www.commansentence.com/two-twitter-trending-topic-poems/
“10 Haikus Dedicated to Twitter Spam” http://www.commansentence.com/10-haikus-dedicated-to-twitter-spam/
“An Ode to Facebook Creepers” http://www.commansentence.com/an-ode-to-facebook-creepers/
“Things That Go Poke in the Night” http://www.commansentence.com/things-that-go-poke-in-the-night/
What a great post, Michelle! The Blogathon has taught me to plan posts in advance (though not anywhere close to 123 – now that’s impressive!), start drafts, and use theme days, which I did for the first two weeks before falling behind this weekend. I was in my friend’s wedding, so we had three days of festivities and fun that I didn’t plan ahead for. I was lucky though – my generous husband helped get me through my weekend posts while I was out with my friends. If you can rope in your spouse/significant other/good friend/Mom/Dad to help when times get tough, go for it!
I also having been using Fridays to link to my favorite posts from other bloggers. It gives others some exposure, and helps me keep up with my reading and take a little break!
It’s never occurred to me to rope my husband or kids into posting for me – not sure they would, but glad yours did.
I’ve run a “Recommended Reading” list on Fridays for some time. Besides articles I see in newspapers and magazines and save as links in a draft post, I use Twitter’s Favorite star to save tweets mentioning interesting sounding items, which I follow up on when the time comes to write the post.
Michelle
Timely post , Michelle! As someone who’s always struggled with deadlines (as my poor guest post swapper now knows), I can’t tell you how much pre-publishing a day in advance has helped me.
Going to try out some of these other ideas soon. I keep wanting to post a video clip but still technically challenged on that one.
This is fun!
Kathy
On this note, I’ve just hatched a plan for the next blogathon theme day that I think will make everybody happy.
Michelle
Great ideas, Michelle! I love the pre-planning idea; I just have to figure out a way to make it work. I’ve been busy with a lot of deadlines this month (which is good!), but often that means I’m blogging on almost empty. Come summer, though, I think I need to seriously consider plotting out some blog posts.
Jenny
I love this post! Caught it at the perfect time. I completely lost steam with my blog, which has me feeling guilty because I feel like I’m letting my followers down by not making an effort. At the same time, my WIP has been going smoother, so I have mixed feelings about it. Planning ahead or even writing post a day or two in advance would really help me juggle the two.
Thank you for the awesome advice!
I’m a huge fan of number 4. It always carries me through. Great post. I’ll tweet it.
Ahh – I see you also use a trick you didn’t mention: turn a thoughtful comment on another blog into well rounded post on your own! Which is really a great idea – sometimes wonderful thoughts are triggered in response to someone else’s topic and you find you care enough about it to say more.
Also, each of your tips has been really helpful, and I’m now working at least one day ahead, thanks to a restful weekend. I’ve got a bus ride coming up this weekend and hope to use some of that time putting some of my mental planning into draft form in wordpress for future posts. You, and the others who posted encouragement that particular day, really helped me through a slump!
You’re welcome. And I actually did include the idea of turning a comment on someone else’ blog post into a post on your own blog – see no. 9.
Encouragement works wonders. I can be dead tired and see something someone else wrote and have an idea for a post based on it come to me in an instant. Aren’t brains wonderful that way?
Michelle R.
Michelle, I agree, it’s not always possible to find family members who want to guest post for you. I got lucky – my husband loves to write about art, so he just connected art to food (because I have a food blog) in his guest posts. It’s worked out really well (though I do feel a prick of guilt that I’ve had help posting one day a week!).
Thanks again for organizing the Blogathon; I’m having so much fun with it!
Jen
Doh – sorry I missed that!!! LOL