Writing motivation #1: Blog maintenance

As I mentioned in my statement of intention I started this blog as a motivator - a reason to write (almost) every day. Obviously that is a good thing. The more writing that gets done the more creative an author is being and the more likely they are to produce something that is worthy of publication.

Well, yes and no.

There are an enormous number of distractions on the internet and maintaining a blog is one of them. Apart from the writing there is always something else that can be added or improved: registering it on a new blog rotation site, adding advertising, restructuring the layout. None of these things will help you with your writing though. I've been guilty of getting caught up in a lot of the following traps - the first step to getting out of them is to recognise that you are in them in the first place.

This post is the first in a series intended to point out daily distractions and help you get on with the important part of the process - writing.

Blog maintenance

You started the blog to get some daily writing done. Now it's taken over your life in other ways. Before you can put that daily post on it you just need to sort out adsense, check your statcounter figures, have a look at technorati to see if anybody has linked to you and probably log on to a dozen more sites besides.

All this can be very distracting and at the end of the day puts nothing of any use to your writing career on your blog. At the same time (at least) some of it is necessary. So what's the solution?

Simple. Allow yourself a fixed amount of time a week - an hour really should be enough once the blog has been set up initially. This should be at a fixed time, say Sunday afternoon, just before dinner. In fact if you can schedule it immediately prior to another regular activity so much the better. That way you have a definite point at which you have to stop.

If you don't get everything done during that hour leave it until the next week. It's not the end of the world; how much do you really earn from adsense anyway? How many people find you through technorati, and of those how many return? The important thing is content. Without that you can have all the casual visitors in the world but if they don't come back and read you it means nothing. Building this base takes time and, above all, genuine content. Not ads, not cute little sidebar guest books or maps or clocks.

So next time you log on to your blog don't touch that "edit template" tag. Just focus on that "create post" one instead and get on with creating.

And good luck.

Categories: Writing, Motivation, Self-help