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Post by Apollo Chungus on Jan 31, 2019 15:01:01 GMT -5
I've become slightly more familiar with some of the folks on this forum in the last couple of weeks, and I've noticed that a fair few of them have links to blogs that they write for every now and again. It reminded me of how I sometimes want to write a blog, but also how I've never really gotten round to doing so. I've made a couple of attempts at it over the years, writing posts on topics that I don't have much opportunity to talk about in my usual circles, and I even started a blog proper... back in 2015, and lord knows where that is. But for whatever reason, I can never work up the motivation to really press forward with it.
So I wanted to ask anyone who writes, or has written, a personal blog at some point: how do you work up the motivation to do it? It's not as if I don't like to write about stuff (I've been doing so for eight-odd years in videos, forum posts, and reviews for this site - to name a couple of writing-related hobbies of mine), and I love the idea of being able to write about stuff in small posts that take a lot less effort to produce than my usual work. But I just can't find the nerve to even start, perhaps because I'm worried that I'll give it up only a couple of posts in - which DID happen when I actually did start a blog.
Can anyone give me tips or suggestions to encourage me to start writing? What were your experiences starting a blog? What website do you think lends itself well to writing a simple blog with maybe a picture or two at most for visual aids? Anything at all would be a great help for me, so thank you in advance if you reply.
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Post by Snake on Jan 31, 2019 17:05:42 GMT -5
I don't really blog. But I think the important thing is to just do it. Just write. Just put out something, and have some consistency. I just recently saw Julie and Julia while on a flight back here to the US, a few days ago. The basic premise of the movie was a woman, in a kind of dead-end job, took up blogging at the advice of her husband. The thing was, blog about cooking every recipe in Julia Child's book (I believe, Mastering the Art of French Cooking). In that kind of format, its easier because you already have a clear and concise goal. All you have to do was to get it done is just stick to the plan. She ended up being the 3rd most visited blog on Salon at the time. At least according to the movie.
You want to stay active? You need to make time for your blog, instead of treating it as an afterthought. Like people who always make time to go to the church/mosque/temple every Sunday. Or who always make time to watch the Walking Dead. Jay Leno always puts out an episode of Jay Leno's garage on Sunday night. It's like clockwork. You have to commit to it. Imagine if friends invited you out to watch the new Avengers movie or a dinner gathering on Sunday night. Do you postpone blogging to go hang out? Or do you put out blog work before your scheduled appointments? Or do you take a raincheck on your friends to postpone your blog? It's your life, you have to run the show. Set up a clear deadline for yourself to make work, and you'll have some consistency. The important thing is to create balance.
Or you could be the other extreme, like an Elon Musk. Have a wife, and 5 kids, and barely give them time, because you're working 120 hours a week running Space X and Tesla Motors, not to mention random side projects like Boring Company, Solar City, Hyperloop, Not-a-flamethrower, etc etc. How will you choose to allocate your time?
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Post by kaoru on Feb 1, 2019 2:36:06 GMT -5
I started it back in 2004/5 when I was jobless, which I think is a big factor in a blog's activity, since school/college kids and the unemployed generally have a lot more free time. Once you are commited to it after having it going for a while, it's easier to simply stay active even with a slower output. Otherwise, I really can't tell. I never had a lot of readers, I never really write anything I feel is particularly great or interesting. I just enjoy writing about the media I consume, mostly for myself, and then thought I might as well simply put it online. Sharing is caring, even if it's not that good Somehow, I never not eventually felt the urge to write on it, probably because it is mostly free spitballing on my personal blog - when I wrote reviews for a different homepage for a while, feeling the need to put them into a more professional form and all, I certainly lost interest eventually. I'm also not a smart enough guy to write thought-provoking essays or thinkpieces. On my blog I can just shit it out the way it comes immediately to mind instead.
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Post by Weasel on Feb 1, 2019 11:05:38 GMT -5
The blog in my signature was pretty much just a one-year project - something to keep me occupied during a period in which I didn't have much else I could do with my time. I was very much only writing for myself, given I had almost no traffic or comments, and my topic is probably far too niche.
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Post by edmonddantes on Feb 9, 2019 2:35:48 GMT -5
You... find something you wanna blog about and you do it. You shouldn't force yourself.
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Post by ResidentTsundere on Feb 10, 2019 3:03:40 GMT -5
I started blogging by adapting stuff I'd already written to my blog. I've improved my style a fair bit since then.
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Post by Ace Whatever on Feb 10, 2019 3:06:22 GMT -5
- Since you already write around the internet, consider why exactly you want to have a blog in particular and whether that reason can be kept up long term. Because if you end up struggling for more than 2 hours a day to write up a blog post and that time was better spent on something more productive it becomes kind of moot.
- Going back to the first point, the blog could be a companion piece to your other written work. You could write about how you researched certain games for an article, your response to certain feedback you've gotten over one article, or a look back on an old article and how your perspective changed or remained the same on it, etc.
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Post by Woody Alien on Feb 16, 2019 6:59:07 GMT -5
I don't have much to say other than sharing my personal experience.
I kept a blog for a few years from around 2008, but my motivation was different: I felt quite depressed and frustrated at the time for several reasons, so I thought that starting to write about myself and such could be of help. Wrote the usual things such as personal musings, films I saw, considerations about society, you know the drill.
Obviously in the beginning nobody followed outside of a few friends I linked the blog to, but after some time I found a few interesting people (all girls, for some reason) who started following, commenting and appreciating what I said. And I did the same with them. So this was my motivation to keep the blog going and try to be more regular in publishing posts. Unfortunately as it often happens in the blogosphere, these people either gradually disappeared or just one day abandoned their blogs right there and then, with no way to contact them (social networks weren't as widespread back then).
So I felt alone once again, plus writing about myself wasn't as helpful as I thought, and re-reading some old posts they felt downright whiny and annoying, so one day around 2011 I just wrote one final post and then removed everything only leaving a "Closed" page. Now that blogging platform doesn't even work anymore, I still have a zipped file with all the dowloaded posts somewhere but I don't know what to do with it.
I don't think I'd have the passion for opening up another blog. Sure, there's also my nasty habit of eventually losing interest in everything I do, so I'm not a role model, but there's also the fact that social networks somewhat killed the traditional personal blog since most people don't want to read long textual rants but just look at a few lines plus some images and memes for good measure (the only time I put an image in my blog posts was to celebrate the 100th post...) and they give you the illusion of having a larger audience than you actually have, while with blogs you couldn't just "buy" followers and such. Blogs could be useful if they are really focused on a specific subject instead of generic posts, but I don't have anything interesting to say outside talking about old games, but I prefer doing it here on HG101 rather than opening a page that nobody cares about.
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