The Blogging Habit

by Joanna @ Confident Writing

Blogging is a powerful writing habit to develop.

With time, repetition and regular practice you’ll find that:

• Your creative mind generates new material, day after day, week after week
• New ideas for posts will pop, unbid, into your mind, asking to be written up and shared
• You notice words, images, resources, ideas that you can use as quarry for posts
• The feedback, responses and comments from readers help you to develop new material to share
• You develop ideas in response to the material you read on other blogs
• It’s easy and quick to generate new material
• It becomes easy, enjoyable even, to share your written work in public, online

Or…

Blogging can be a dangerous habit for writers to develop.

With time, repetition and regular practice you’ll find that:

• Your creative mind generates new material, day after day, week after week… squeezing out the room for other types of writing
• New ideas for posts will pop, unbid, into your mind, asking to be written up and shared…reducing the creative energy you have for other pieces of work
• You notice words, images, resources, ideas that you can use as quarry for posts… rather than articles, stories, books you want to write
• The feedback, responses and comments from readers help you to develp new material to share… in the format you’re used to sharing it, rather than testing out new boundaries
• You develop ideas in response to the material you read on other blogs… and risk getting overwhelmed with the constant seduction of the new
• It’s easy and quick to generate new material… hard to write slowly again, in longer, more thoughtful form
• It becomes easy, enjoyable even, to share your written work in public, online… creating a comfort zone, which can keep you stuck, and comfortable

Blogging can help you to find your writing voice. Give you the confidence to test and develop new ideas.

Blogging might well give the inspiration for a new project: a business idea you want to develop or a book you want to write.

But does it also give you the freedom to head off and explore those new opportunities? To test, develop and apply that new found writing confidence?