The Secret to Writing Blog Entries
To All Blog Writers Out There, I am going to tell you the secret to writing blog entries. I will tell you everything I have learned in my almost two years of blog-writing. This may well be the secret to all writing. This may well be a clue as to what makes someone a writer.
Here is the key: When an idea for an entry pops into your head, you have to stop everything and start writing.
For instance, for the entry about the eye doctor, you would think I could just write myself a note “Eye Doctor” and not have to stop in the middle of the important thing I’m doing . You would think I would remember everything I wanted to say, but that is not – I repeat – not how it works.
Later I would have looked at my note “Visit to Eye Doctor”in bewilderment and I would have thought: “What is there really to say about the visit to eye doctor? It was just a visit to the eye doctor.”
The moment would have passed. The zip and inspiration would have gone.
All I could have written later was: “Monday I went to the eye doctor. He examined my eyes. He was very nice. He said my eyes were okay. I forgot to take my sunglasses with me so they could be fixed while I was there. I will have to make another trip.”
Do you know what I mean? You have to strike while the iron is hot, or your blog entries won’t be exciting like this one. Ahem.
Every writer knows about letting their writing sit a little so that you can look at it again with new eyes and catch something you didn’t before, something to take out, or something to add or extend, as I just did by adding this point.
I have discovered another secret to writing. I don’t know what this is called. And I may have been the first person in the history of the world to discover it! Do you want to hear it, by any chance?
It is hard to explain. I guess you would say it is to write in different milieus.
For this blog, first I write in Word on the computer. Of course, I go over what I’ve written (when time allows) several times.
But now here is the key. If I just looked at what I’ve written in Word over and over again, I would get only so far.
What I do next is to copy and paste into Notepad — which I have to do for the blog. When I read it over in Notepad, the font is different, and puts a distance between me and the writing. It is somehow like seeing what I’ve written a month later. I see it more objectively. And, most often, I find something to improve in Notepad.
THEN I copy and paste into draft in Word Press, the program that this blog is in.
The final step is then publishing the entry, which is what you see, and nine times out of ten, when I view the posted entry, I see something else to change or smooth or take out.
I had better qualify something. None of this applies to Godwriting™, which writes itself and is better off without revision except for typos or to make antecedents clear. Otherwise, rewriting Godwriting takes away its Godness.
I learned all this by chance.
And that’s all I can think of that I have learned!
Oh, yes, one more thing, another thing that helps a lot is having great people reading your blog. That helps enormously. I don’t thing it could be done without an audience.
It also helps to commit to writing an entry every day.
Other writers out there, what secrets have you learned?
Godwriting is a blog by Gloria Wendroff and is about Gloria's daily life as the Godwriter of the Heavenletters project that is having a profound effect on the lives of people around the world.
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