A few simple secrets of blogging

It’s been interesting to see how many people have been in touch to say how much they agree with my assertion yesterday that distractions don’t necessarily damage the writing process — and for some of us may even help. Here’s another question I get asked a lot: how do you manage to write regular blog posts and work on the book and do a bit of Twitter and (a diminishing amount) of Facebook at the same time?

Here’s Lorelei King on Twitter a few minutes ago: ‘Was this great post really written in 15 minutes?!’

People, people. Yes. And it’s really, really easy to do a few regular blog posts if you just follow a few basic principles. Here are mine…

First, never ever write for the sake of it. If you don’t have anything to say you won’t find it by trying to write something.

Second, say one thing, say it clearly, and then get the hell out of here. And be prompted into writing by something you encounter, something that challenges or reinforces an opinion you already have. This piece, for example, is a simple response to a tweet. Yesterday’s post was a simple response to a blog post elsewhere.

I don’t try to do long, complex didactic pieces here. I look at one small thing, sometimes in a little detail, and then shut up. If you ever find me putting up a post entitled something like ‘Six Golden Rules That Can Improve Your Characterisation and Help You Write A Better Thriller’ then please come round and kill me — you have my permission.

Third, don’t worry about grammar and spelling and punctuation too much. These are blog posts, OK? You’re getting this for free. There’s no sub-editor standing between me and you trying to make things right. Though I suppose in one sense that makes the whole process rather like modern-day journalism. But I digress….

Point four. When you have an idea just write it, there and then, when it’s fresh in your head. Not if it means taking your focus away from some important scene, of course. But if you do things my way you can get one of these put together in a coffee break. Come on. How hard is that?

Five. Make it easy for yourself. Typing posts into a browser is messy and hard. Trying to find unnecessary illustrations for a simple piece of text is time-consuming and pointless. I write mostly about writing. Words will do. Also I use a piece of software that lets me write blog posts offline, take a look them, file them under the right categories, then hit send. And they are published.

That software is called Ecto in my case, and one of the many cool things it will do is let me write a post and time it for a later publication date. So this weekend I can file away a few thoughts for next week perhaps.

But not this one. I’m going to send this one off right now. I started writing it 0924. It is now 0931. Seven minutes. Just to make a couple of simple points about things I already knew. Nothing to it. Now to walk the dog. I’m gone.

Related posts:

1. Keeping it simple
2. Annotations: keep it simple
3. Dead simple Scrivener tip
4. Distractions can sometimes be good
5. Writing a book diary