I once read an interview with the great Caitlin Moran, where she said that she found it easier to write when she had a number of different writing projects to complete than when she was writing one 800 word column per week.
Now I am not about to compare myself to Caitlin Moran (OK, I am), but I think I know how she feels. In the past few weeks life has filled up with other tasks, and blogging has taken a bit of a back seat.
I have watched as other bloggers seem to churn out posts day after day, whilst maintaining their profile across countless social media channels and still inexplicably having time to raise their children.
And I don’t know how they do it.
My mind, it seems, is not good at multi-tasking. When I am busy at work, work takes over and everything else is squeezed out. When I am house-hunting, as I have been for the past few weeks, if you could look into my mind all you would see would be an endless parade of houses and flats, school catchment areas and frantically googled “up and coming areas” (which in my price range, are not likely to be up and going anywhere before the next century).
In addition, my Yoast plugin* is telling me in a rather-too-judgemental way that the “readability” of my posts isn’t up to scratch. Apparently I need to increase the number of subheadings, reduce the length of my sentences and avoid the use of the passive voice. Frankly, all that sounds like the blogging equivalent of those NHS leaflets that consist entirely of pictures and a few massive words and appear to be based on the assumption that large swathes of the UK population are unable to read (we’ll see if this is true on Thursday. Not trying to be political or anything but VOTE REMAIN. Oh no, hang on. No one is going to read this, so what’s the point? Even if they do happen to stumble upon this post-and by my own admission, it’s one of my more pointless ones-the appalling readability score will presumably prevent them from drawing any meaning from it whatsoever).
So here I am, writing a post about how I can’t think of anything to write, my creativity has dried up, and I may as well just give it up, except that I’m not going to as there are countless things I want to write about, but I just don’t seem to be able to do them justice at present. So I am going to go to Britmums**, and hope that I find some inspiration therein.
Perhaps I will come back with the realisation that I am in the wrong job, and my real career lies in professional blogging, laying bare my life before a host of corporate sponsors. Or maybe I will realise no one knows me or cares about my writing, and fade miserably into oblivion.
Or maybe I will rise, slowly but surely, like a phoenix from the flames (sorry, couldn’t resist a little joint nod to the cultural phenomena that are the 2015 Eurovision winner and the classic nineties televisual masterpiece Fantasy Football League there) and finally make the transition from little-known ranter of rubbish on the internet to renowned power-blogger.
All I need to do now is think of something to write.***
*This is a tool which assesses my posts and tells me if they are likely to rank highly in Google search engines, for any non-bloggers/technophobes that may be reading this, and YES, I do count myself among those of you in the latter category.
**Bloggy conference thing. Watch this space if you are in any way remotely interested in hearing about a cacaphony of mummy bloggers descending upon London town for a weekend of talking about cake, Pinterest, cake on Pinterest and Instagramming everything in sight.
***And stars. I need to stop it with these bloody stars. It’s like a weird glossary of stuff no one cares about unless they have exactly the same hobbies as me, namely shouting into the internet about their life and hoping someone, somewhere, listens. GOD I AM OVER THINKING THIS. Stop it now, just stop.
My list of fabulous ideas of amazing (!) posts is growing by the day and so far I have badly bullet pointed one of them, opened a document to start another and closed it, half written bits of another in my head and perfected the first sentence to one but absolutely nothing after that. It’s getting boggy in here. The point of this is to say I completely understand at the moment…and I have nothing useful to offer except some understanding!! I hope you wriggle out of this phase soon,I’m sure you will – will be interesting to see what impact BML has. For me, I don’t think I wrote anything for weeks after Blogfest…I’m hoping that doesn’t happen again! See you Saturday x
I meant to write a post specifically about Blogfest, but never got round to it and ended up turning it into a post about Britmums instead. I found that Blogfest helped more with big picture stuff, like long term blog goals, rather than the smaller day to day practicalities, so it will be interesting to see how BML is different. See you Saturday! X
Oh us bloggers are such a group of over thinkers – I could not cope with the analytic tool which tells me my posts aren’t readable enough – ouch! Min, I truly love reading your posts – always well thought out and intelligent – always a total pleasure to read and that’s why you’ve features on front page Mumsnet – readers love what you write so don’t go changing. Let’s chat more at the weekend – can’t wait xx
I can’t wait either. It’s going to be fab. Thank you for your lovely comment. The readability thing is a recent addition to Yoast, and I’m like um, excuse me, thank you for classifying my posts as unreadable! I’m writing for me and my loyal readers, not Google algorithms! See you Saturday. X
I constantly overthink. I worry that I post too much but I write at night when I can’t sleep and it is the only thing that helps me sleep, says a lot about my posts-haha. I worry about Yoast which is always telling me that my posts are RED. I find the red offensive. But then when I step back and really think about it, I’m not really worried. I think it is Brit Mums nerves, it has made me question everything I do but I shouldn’t over analyse it. I am writing because I love to write. When I was a teacher it was what I dreamed of doing. I really think teaching does take over your life, it leaves you mentally and emotionally exhausted and there is no way I could have written a blog back then. I love your blog, I love your writing. You are doing amazing work. Your blog always makes me think. Don’t go changing, ignore Yoast, ignore those subheadings. Rules were made to be broken!
Thank you, that’s such a lovely comment. Rules were certainly made to be broken, and I think Britmums looming does make us overthink. What with SEO and all the social media that goes along with running a blog it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. No one can do it all!
I think finding new house is an entirely reasonable excuse for not being uber-blogger. I have no such excuse, just buried under a pile of ennui and feeling sorry for myself for no good reason. I’m sure I’ll snap out of it. Absolutely can’t wait til Saturday!!! xxx
But you are an uber-blogger Zilla! Looking forward to Saturday. Can’t believe I’m actually going tomorrow. Eek!
I haven’t ran dry of ideas just yet (but then I’ve only done this for two months), but I do sometimes get completely stuck and start to panic.( I am sure that no one would noticed if I missed my weekly blogging a days.) Luckily, I have come to system whereas whenever I am in the mood to write I sit down and hash out a few posts in one go and schedule them to come out over a few weeks. That way I only have to do anything every couple of weeks, but if inspiration comes I can just squeeze it in somewhere. I also keep a book of random post ideas for if I’m coming up short. They may end up as something different from what I originally planned but…oh well!
I hope you don’t stop blogging though for what it’s worth, I enjoy what you write!
Lucy xx
#TribaLove
Thank you. I don’t usually schedule my posts, although I have tried. I do have the list of posts, but often when I come back to look at them the moment has passed. Oh well!
I think you are doing great! But it is easy to get overwhelmed when work and other personal thongs are taking up a lot of time. I’ll be honest I’ve taken the last few nights off because I haven’t watched TV since I started blogging and work has been crazy. I needed a break from thinking and worrying about everything g blog related and I loved it. Hopefully in a few days I’ll write another post and get back in the game. But it’s ok to put it on the back burner for a little bit. People will still enjoy your blog because you are funny, thoughtful, and a good writer!
#TribalLove
Thank you! Yes, it is fine to put it on the back burner for a bit. I was just panicking because unsurprisingly my stats had gone down and I felt I was out of the writing habit. It happens now and again.
Oh min, it takes a what to blog about to work out what to blog about. Brit mums will hopefully give you loads of inspiration. Don’t look at what others churn out, it might not be that good! I feel like most my stuff is rubbish but If I don’t just write I’ll never get better!! Try not to worry ? #triballove
That’s very true-that’s why I forced myself to write this post. I had got completely out of the habit, which was making it more difficult. Fingers crossed for that inspiration at Britmums!
I have a list of posts to write but no time to do it … Something about having a newborn! lol. I’m at about of a cross roads too. I’m not sure I have what it takes to be a super blogger!! I like your long sentances :). Thanks for joining us at #BloggerClubUK hope to see you again this week X
Thanks! I didn’t write anything for about 2 months when I had Piglet. Just impossible! Enjoy the newborn stage.