You struggle to run a blog, to post regularly; daily, weekly, bi-weekly. You insist on keeping your content fresh. Your grammar would make your English teacher proud. Then all you manage are 2 lousy page views in a day. You ask yourself why? You wonder what you are doing wrong. You even contemplate quitting, but don’t bring yourself to do it just yet. Then you keep posting and in the posting, you inevitably learn a thing or two. Here is what I have learnt about Blogging so far;
1. It is not always about what you’re doing wrong. Sure, there is always room for improvement but I know now that with blogging, nothing is a guarantee. You can only give your best.
2. It is sweat and blood. Headaches, nay, migraines as you scratch your head to find something worth writing. Day in, day out. Blogging is no mean feat.
3. It is feelings of inadequacy creeping up on you when you harbor thoughts of self-doubt. You wonder why you write in the first place. You doubt your credibility as a blogger. You don’t understand why someone, anyone, should take a few minutes off their busy, interesting, productive schedule to read what you have put out. You encounter resistance. You become bedfellows with writer’s block. Then you get over it, pick yourself up and get back to work. And the cycle continues.
4. It is the inability to stop writing and the obsessive need to keep writing even when no one seems to care enough to visit your website. You just do it anyway.
5. It has stressed to me how much of a solitary affair writing is. It gets lonely sometimes. Especially when you write and nobody reads. Or nobody bothers to comment. You feel you are not reaching the people you so desperately want to reach.
6. People don’t appreciate mediocrity. An ill-written post with grammatical errors, typos and careless mistakes put people off. Just because a blog is a less formal media outlet doesn’t mean that you will post typo-filled articles and get away with it.
7. Falling off the wagon is easy. Getting back up is tough. Many are the times that something has come up and I have failed to put up a post. Soon a week goes by. Then two weeks. Before you know it, a month is gone and your blog is soon becoming a memory to your readers. You don’t want that to happen.
8. Persistence is a must for a writer. Those 2 page views mean that someone somewhere has read what you put out. Even then, your sweat does not go to waste. What you do is you keep posting. Keep writing. Keep going.
9. Blogging, writing in general, is never about monetary gains. Money matters may come in later, but not a minute before you put in the hard work and prove yourself worthy of being regarded as a bona fide writer.
10. It is not about you, it is about your end product. It all boils down to content. Nobody really cares how impossible your day was, how queasy or hot your head feels. Nobody cares. You either update your blog or you are so yesterday!
11. It has made me believe in the power of my own voice. This is what keeps me writing week in, week out. That I deserve to be heard. My dreams are valid….you know the rest.
12. Passion is a very powerful driving force. I believe most bloggers, if not all, blog relentlessly because of the passion they have for it.
13. With writing, there is no such thing as quitting. You write something that is not up to standard; you go back to the drawing board and write again. And again. And again. You keep rewriting until you get it right. You never quit. Never!
14. Over and above, blogging has taught me the most important lesson of all about writing: The more you write, the better you get at it. When I read the posts I wrote when I was just starting my blog, I see a big difference in how I used to write then, and how I write now. Big, big difference!
In the end, it has all been worthwhile and I intend to keep going to see where this journey takes me. I hope you do too.
Keep blogging.
This post was written by Renee Murrey. She is a writer and a blogger who is passionate about issues affecting women. Ever since she discovered her coherence with pen and paper, she has made them her bosom buddies. Renee is intrigued by love. A mother herself, she is awed by motherhood. She runs the blogs THE RENEEISSANCE at Renee.co.ke