Publish in 10 Minutes Per Day — presented at WordCamp Europe

You don’t need this post. You’re an awesome blogger, right? You post exciting content every day and you never ever run out of ideas, amiright?

Yeah. Me neither.

Days go by, and then weeks. You think about how good posting would feel: to write, to publish, to get those likes and comments. But you don’t actually do anything about it. The longer your blog sits there, the more pressure you feel to make your next post AWESOME. Which of course means you now have writer’s block, because really, who can write under the pressure of having to write something amazing? So you don’t post. Your visitors leave. Your views dry up. You feel like a terrible blogger and you go cry in a corner.

When I started working full time, I no longer had time or focus for my blog. I stopped publishing regularly. My views and followers dwindled. I felt bad about myself for neglecting the blog I had grown to love, and that helped me find my career path with WordPress.com.

Abandoning my blog was not okay with me. So I tried to figure out what was keeping me from blogging. I determined that I had two blockers: time and topics.

During my blogging drought, I’d think “I don’t have time for my blog anymore,” or if I made time, I’d sit down with my pen and paper only to be blocked by, “I don’t have anything interesting to say.” So I came up with a way to make time, and I devised a tool that ensured I’d never run out of topics

Time

I was a once member of a weekly writing group. We did what’s called “free-writes”: we’d set a timer, write for 10 minutes without lifting our pens from the page, and when the timer dinged, we put our pens down and read what we wrote.

To make time in my life for blogging, I iterated on the idea of the free-write and decided to carve 10 minutes out of my day, every day, to write.

Ten minutes is so little. You can do it after an early morning walk, when exercise has gotten your creative juices flowing. Or you can do it as soon as you wake, when you’re still in a dream state. Or you can do it on lunch, or with a cocktail. Or in bed at night when you realize, oh crap, I haven’t written yet today.

The main thing to remember is that ten minutes can be squeezed in anywhere in the day.

To REALLY make this work, here’s a pro-tip: Create a cue. Carve out a specific time of day and create a trigger for your writing time so that you will make a habit of it. Set an alarm for when you want to write, and give yourself a reward for following through. I give myself coffee to go with my writing time. Pairing a trigger, like an alarm, with a reward, like coffee, will help you build a habit of writing every day.

Topics

The ten-minute write takes care of the time issue, but what about topics? When I stopped blogging after starting my full time job, I found it difficult to begin posting again. The longer my blog sat inactive, the higher the wall of my writer’s block grew. Each time I thought about writing, I fretted: “But what will I write about?”

Again, I’ll turn to a writing group strategy. At our gatherings, we always placed a silver box filled with folded slips of paper in the middle of the table. At the beginning of each free write, one of us would pull a piece of paper from the box and read the words written on it aloud. We’d then write for ten minutes about whatever the prompt was.

This same strategy works for blogging. To create a prompt box, snip a sheet of paper into about 30 slips. On each slip, write a word or phrase that has meaning to you. Examples of some of mine are marshmallows, reading on boats, and prairie grass. If you’re writing for a business site, you could seed your box with employee names, materials you use, or anything unique to your business or the way it operates.

Once you’ve written your prompts, fold the slips and place them in a box. Whenever you sit down to write, if you have nothing to say, pull a prompt out and start writing.

Start publishing

To overcome writer’s block and start publishing again, pair the ten-minute free write with the prompt box. During the time you’ve carved out for your writing, grab your timer and your box. Pull a prompt, write for ten minutes, and when the timer dings, stop writing.

You’re skeptical. You wonder, Does this really work? What about editing?

In April, I dedicated to publishing a 10-minute write every day for 30 days. Each morning, I poured a cup of coffee before my work day started, pulled a slip of paper from my prompt box, started a timer, and wrote until the timer dinged. I did a quick scan for spelling and punctuation errors, then scheduled the post to publish the following morning.

The scheduling delay allowed me to do extra editing if I wanted to, but I rarely did. Why didn’t I edit? Because during that month, I learned to live by the creed, Perfect is the enemy of Done.

Publishing this way is liberating. Some posts will bomb, but some posts will take off more than you can anticipate. It’s like shooting 100 frames to get the right photograph: every shot isn’t going to be brilliant, but each click of the shutter helps you improve and sets you up for when a prime moment arrives for you to capture it; because you’ve been practicing, and because you’re ready, you’ll capture it beautifully.

Using the prompt box and the timer, I published every day in the month of April. My blog no longer sat empty and neglected. Visitors climbed 26%, and views increased 45% over the previous month, from 3700 in March to 5400 views in April. My blog was active again, and readers loved the spontaneity of it. In fact, they got involved by sending me prompts. When I wrote from a reader’s prompt, I gave credit and linked back to their site, helping build community.

Giving yourself meaningful topics to write about and then carving out the time to write will get you not only practicing, but will get you publishing again. It will make your blog active and will bring visitors to your site.

Starting is the hardest part. Once you start, the writer’s block wall will begin to crumble. By making a habit of writing, and by making sure you always have topics on hand, you’ll be able to reduce that wall to a pile of rubble that you can easily kick out of your way.

How to get started? Right here, right now. Create a prompt box. Make a list of 20 things you love: chocolate, sausage, fonts, portraits.

When you are out in the world, whether eavesdropping in a coffee shop or observing people on park benches, make notes of objects or scenes that strike you. Record a voice memo on your phone or ink these ideas on your hand so you can remember them. When you return home, add those mementos to your prompt box.

Then? Write.

More ten-minute protips:

• Write every day, but publish every other day. This gives your readers some breathing room, and it will allow you to stockpile posts for when you are on vacation or for those days when you don’t want to share what you’ve written.
• To mix it up for your readers, keep some photos on hand. A compelling photograph with a well-written caption doesn’t require a long blog post and can take only minutes to craft.
• Share a link to an online article you read, along with a quote or your own thoughts about the piece. Here is an example of this from Andrew Spittle, one from Luca Sartoni, and another from Matt Mullenweg.

Resources:

Getting Started with a Prompt Box
April Daily posts

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