How hard is it to stare into a white blank paper, knowing you have to fill it somehow, this is how I feel every time I try to write a new blog post, and yet when I really start it all comes to me naturally like I have been writing for the blog for years and not only less than a year!
When I look back on the posts I made, I can remember where the idea flow hit me, in this post I want to reflect on how I do this, how I go from being afraid of sitting on the laptop to write, into having a flow of ideas that doesn’t make me stop until I finish the blog post.
Here I am not claiming I have the right tactics or that those steps or reflections can apply to everyone, it is just the way I do it.
Reading other articles or skimming them!
When I write about a certain topic, I read about it. I don’t mean here whole books, but some articles that help me gather ideas, sometimes it is just skimming some blogs that talk about the same topic. This step helps me gather a lot of ideas in my brain before I start writing. Also, I might do this for several days before even considering starting the process of writing.
As I am writing about content strategy topics, even these topics will include personal opinions, past experiences, and even sometimes a few feelings! But there are important books that helped me define the process more and relate it to the content strategy topics. Two important books are:
- Everybody writes – by Ann Handley.
- The Elements of Content Strategy – by Erin Kissane
Beginning the Writing Process
When I begin to write, I always know what the first sentence is, usually it is a well-prepared sentence in my head that I have been thinking of for a couple of days.
But that is it! Yes, as you read, when I start writing usually, I only have the topic, some other articles, and the first sentence in my mind.
At that point, I don’t even have a title, summary, or idea flow in my head.
I usually start with the first paragraph and leave the post for next day, the next day I can sit on my laptop look at the page and it is not blank anymore, which motivates me to keep on writing. That point is usually when I start writing and doesn’t stop until I am finished with putting all my ideas and thoughts on paper.
What is easy, what is hard
For me, it is easy to express my ideas, but as I am writing about Content Strategy topics and not my own adventures, it was difficult for me at the beginning to link my personal opinion with the discipline, books, and articles of Content Strategy. Now it is much easier for me to know exactly where to link to articles/books and where I benefit from other colleagues’ blogs. That was a matter of more experience for me.
The final step
Usually, the final step is about writing the headline of the post, maybe because I used to write a lot of press releases and articles at my work, I still use the same style, a short headline and then a longer one that explains more the idea. I find this kind of headlines catchy and if someone misses one sentence it is most probably that the second one will catch his attention.
Reviewing Process
At the final stage, when the post is ready comes to me the reviewing process when I start reading all over again, making changes, moving some sentences/paragraphs, and thinking about the picture and other layout things.
Important and interesting blog posts on the same subject:
1. Beate Oettl, On productive writing and how I write this blog:
2. Stella Thoma: What happens to my mind when writing:
Comments