Drifting Along With The Tumbling Tumbleweeds
Posted on Thursday, April 11th, 2013
I can almost hear the wind whistling through this lonesome prairie… er, I mean blog.
You may have noticed a little lull in my blog. Okay, a big lull. All is well in Winker-World, but I sort of fell down a rabbit hole for a while.
Flashback a few weeks – With a little help from my friend, Patti Stafford, I made some noteworthy noise about writing more, blah blah blah, then fell off. You can read more about that here – The Hardest Thing About Writing Is Writing
Then today I read Patti’s latest blog post – Common Obstacles on the Road to Success. A line in that post jumped out and grabbed me. I’m going to paraphrase it here:
Stop searching for what’s going to work, and make what you are already doing work.
Make What You Are Already Doing Work
So, I asked myself; “What am I already doing and how can I make it work?” The answer is – I write. I like to write. I love to write. I am verbose. Why not just write? This is sort of the idea Patti shared in a previous post – Start From Where You’re At
You see, like me, many bloggers love writing, but find writing difficult, for all kinds of reasons. Also, like me, many bloggers need to earn money. We may want to write, we may even love to write, but when we sit down at the computer, the time spent writing takes away from the time spent earning a living, or so it seems much of the time.
But, first and foremost, as a blogger, I have to write. Right? Right.
Then I opened my email and found an update from a blog I follow, clicked on, and started reading. I think somebody’s trying to tell me something. The email was from BoostBlogTraffic.com and in the post I started reading how I had better get writing, and by writing he didn’t mean spewing out a bunch of content and SEO loaded junk, etc. etc. Ouch.
Not only was I NOT doing even the minimum writing (the SEO content type blogging) but I wasn’t even writing the stuff I wanted to write! You know, engaging the reader and sharing my thoughts and good stuff like that. Then I clicked on a link to a post by Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger and saw this:
Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.
Well, shut my mouth!
Okay. I get it. Sheesh. You don’t have to hit me over the head with… oh wait… you do.
The next time I find myself hearing that wind whistling through the deserted streets of my blog, and my thoughts (and words) are drifting along with the Tumbling Tumbleweeds, I can just sing this little tune:
I know when night has gone
That a new world’s born at dawn.
I’ll keep rolling along
Deep in my heart is a song
Here on the range I belong
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.
I’ll be thinking about all the writers out there waking up to a new dawn, confident enough to roll along just one more day, doing what we do… write.
(lyrics courtesy of Sons Of The Pioneers)
p.s. Did I say you can actually make money blogging? I think I did! Here’s where the mother in me shamelessly drops the daughter’s name – Nicole Dean – and tells you that she is a master at making an income online. I will also shamelessly drop the name of her new book all about making money blogging – Blogging For Profit – and tell you that, yes, I have read it from cover to cover and am implementing many of her methods.
If you have a blog and you want to quit feeling guilty spending time writing when you should be working, this is the book for you! You can have the best of both worlds. Enjoy your blog AND make it pay!
Click on and start Blogging For Profit today!
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I knew you’d be back. You can’t stay away. You love this blog and you are a blogger. But, I have to admit that I struggle with consistency too. I don’t feel like it, I’d rather play Solitaire or watch TV or—gasp–scrub the toilet.
Yeah, it’s bad when you’d rather scrub the toilet than write your blog post, but hey, I can clean the toilet in five minutes. I can not blog in five minutes. LOL
We’ll get there. Maybe not as fast as the rest of the group, but we’ll drag up the rear in style and have a blast at the back of the line by ourselves. 😉
You’re too sweet, Patti. Thank you! I’ll hang out with you at the back of the line any time.
Yeah, and there are days when I look for jobs to do just to not have to look at a blank screen. Because, no matter how hard I try, there is no way I am going to crank out a blog post in less than an hour… at least a blog post with any meat or meaning to it at all. And, according to Mark Hermann (who wrote the post on BoostBlogTraffic.com that I mentioned), we shouldn’t be blogging mediocre, forgettable crap. So, there’s that.
So, I’ll meet you at the back of the line. And, they’ll all recognize us as the bloggers with the clean toilets. tee hee!