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Maybe you want to write better, more often or with more focus. Maybe you take photographs but have no idea how to edit them or where they'll work on your blog. Maybe your blog is bumming you out.
What great things could you do for your blog in a month? And can you do them by having the courage to suck at them?
Yes, these are related questions, at least for me.
Call it a writing slump, Twitter overload, or the fallout from going back to a full-time demanding job as a college teacher while grieving the loss of my grandmother, but in recent months my personal blog, and in some ways my creative output in general, has suffered. (And no, the creative drought isn't all Twitter's fault. I know.)
My ideas sound stupid in my head, and I don't want to let them out of their cages of stupid so they stay safely locked up. My photos that have brought me so much joy for the past four years seem uninspired. I have flashes of said inspiration and they're gone. I sit down to write or to upload, even about things that previously would have come easily, and it's nothing but the blank white Typepad box blinking up at me. I feel weird about my space in Blogland, as a life and photo blogger with nary a child or even a pet now in a virtual zip code that seems increasingly niche-oriented, mom-centered (sorry, I feel bad even uttering that, some of my best friends are mommybloggers, etc.) and marketing crazy.
The blog that I've loved, I kind of hate it. Our fourth anniversary is in ten days, and I'm thinking we either have to take a mini-break and reconnect or break up. I have existential, and in my opinion kinda elitist blogging angst. Because really, worrying intensely about the direction of my blog is not up there on the list of things that will solve the world's problems.
It matters to me, though, so it's a thing. It's been suggested that I should quit it, but I don't want to. I love writing online. My site is the best of what came out of a crappy personal era. It's an archive and an ongoing record, and of all the things I've ever hoped to write, one of those "please beg me to stay-I'm so quitting my blog-you can't stop me-please stop me" posts is at the bottom of the negative list. So we soldier on, me and my archives and outdated sidebar buttons and template I can't figure out how to change because I've never really taken the time, because one of us doesn't want to break up, and the other one? It can't, because it's a software application and I tell it what to do, duh.
Enter Darren Rowse at Problogger, the man who Tweets what the morning is like in Australia just as I'm shutting down for the night, pretty much every day. His 31 Days to Build a Better Blog series starts today, April 6 (wherever you are, and whatever time it is.)
The idea behind this is simply to have a group of bloggers setting
aside a month of their time to work at improving their blogs. While we
all want to have better blogs sometimes it becomes one of those things
that we’re going to do…. one day.I personally find that I improve (in all areas of my life) when I’m
more intentional and set aside a specific time to make the
improvements. That’s what this project is about.
Every day, he says, he'll offer some background instruction and a takeaway task, which is what I'm looking forward to the most. The link to Day One's topic hit my inbox bright and early this morning - crafting an elevator pitch for your blog, a 30-second or 150 word synopsis of what your blog is about, what it offers, and what you have to say (Or show. Or do. Or whatever.)
On of the most important reasons to do this exercise is that to develop
an elevator pitch YOU as a blogger to have thought through and
crystallised in your mind what your blog is about.If you’re fuzzy on what your blog is about it’s unlikely than anyone else will have much of an idea either.
Some of these ideas will likely sound very business and marketing-heavy right off the top because, well, the challenge is hosted on Problogger. And if, like me, you do not like to talk to strangers
