I’m a reader – reading is possibly my favorite past time. But I have to admit that with my focus on reading instead of writing this year, I miss my composition books. I miss my blog.
A friend asked, “What about your 10 minutes per day?” when I told him my blog was sad and lonely. Those minutes are going to consuming instead of producing these days.
But today I’m up early (as always). It’s another snow day and everyone else is sleeping. A cat purrs at my knee, snow clicks against the window, and I hear the tappity-tap of my keyboard and the quiet tick of the clock.
The funny thing is that part of the reason I’m not writing is because everyone else is. January and February are our biggest months in support at WordPress.com as folks follow through on New Year’s resolutions to start blogging. I love that, that we see such a huge spike as people dedicate themselves to publishing online. It’s an extraordinarily busy time, though, and one that I don’t squeeze time in for my own writing.
This morning though, I did. I opted to write instead of emptying the dishwasher.
Another busy day is about to begin, but for now my world is still and silent. I wrote my Andrea Reads America post, and I dusted off this blog as well. It feels good to be here, if just for a moment.
It is a warm, rainy Christmas day. We opened gifts, ate cinnamon rolls, and lounged all morning amidst shiny bows and piles of ripped wrapping paper. The cats are playing in cardboard boxes, our daughter is messaging me from across the room on her new iPod, our son has completed his fifth reading of the Catan instructions so we can figure out how to play, my husband is in the garage building a bed, and I am staring out the window at wet gray branches, listening to the soft patter of rain.
I wish I had a seed catalog.
The weather feels more like spring than winter — we have the sliding glass door open to welcome fresh air — and with an empty, lazy day indoors, I’d love to thumb through a catalog of leaves and flowers, day-dreaming about the garden we will plant in spring.
It has been years since I’ve planned, planted, or tended a real garden. I puttered in Minnesota, but never really dedicated myself. On my recent birthday, when our son gave me a book about butterfly gardening, I spent two days sketching: plotting groupings of host and nectar plants, visualizing colors, planning my kill of large swaths of grass to make room for flower and herb beds.
I may be be overambitious. As far as gardening goes, Virginia soil is foreign to me, as are seasons. In Florida we had a wet season and a dry. There were no freezes; there were no thaws. The main challenges were a scorching sun and the relentless growth: without a winter, there was no break from weeding.
Since I know nothing, it may be wise to start seeds indoors instead of buying hundreds of dollars worth of mature plants. We can buy a packet of seeds — enough for multiple groupings — for a fraction of the cost of a single potted plant.
Now, with Christmas rain coming down and a kitten in my lap, I want to turn the pages of a magazine-paper catalog. I want to circle the herbs and flowers we hope to grow, tabulate costs, and daydream about a garden in the front of our new house, green, and filled with sunshine and butterflies.
If you know of a good free seed catalog, or follow any Virginia gardening blogs that might help a newbie like me, please let me know in the comments. Thanks!
After my talk at WordCamp US on publishing in 10 minutes per day, an attendee approached me and said, “I realized during your talk that I do most of the things you spoke about. But I do them on my phone while I’m rocking my baby, after she’s gone to sleep and I have those few minutes of quiet.”
I loved that he sneaks in writing time in the best way he can fit it into his life: with his sleeping baby in his arms, on a phone because that’s the way he can make it work.
He inspired me. I am writing this on my phone, from the bleachers at the pool on a Friday night while our daughter’s swim team practices below.
I’ve never written like this before. My husband would tease me because I’m a single-finger texter, and I’m super slow. Typing this is no different. It pains him to watch me type on a phone, much the same way watching someone hunt and peck on a keyboard pains me. But he’s not here, so I can type slowly and painfully.
It’s funny being stripped down like this, to only using the WordPress app on the phone. It’s making me realize how distractable I am on a laptop. In the paragraph above, I would have searched the thesaurus for a synonym for “pain” so I wouldn’t repeat the word so many times. But that’s too much trouble on a phone, switching apps and whatnot, so all the pains stay.
This may not be the most brilliant thing I’ve ever written, but I guess it’s always good to try something new. Krista Stevens has written before that the best camera is the one you have with you. We are moving into an era where I think we can say the same thing about blogging tools.
For those of you who missed it live, the video of my WordCamp US presentation, “Publish in 10 Minutes Per Day,” is now available. The transcript of the talk is here. Enjoy!
You’re an awesome blogger, right? You never run out of ideas, you work your full time job, exercise daily, manage your household, and still publish regularly on your blog. You post exciting content every day and can sustain your level of blogging forever and ever, amiright?
Yeah. Me neither.
Sad blogger.
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 untouched, the more pressure you feel to make your next post AWESOME to make up for being a slacker. 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 trickle down to zero. You feel like a terrible blogger and you go cry in a corner.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
I found a way to make time for your blog so that you can not only fit it into your life, but so that you have something to write about every time you put fingers to keyboard.
My name is Andrea Badgley and I’ve been blogging for four years on my personal site here at andreabadgley.com. When I first started my blog, I was a stay-at-home mom and published multiple times a week. I had a decent following, and was gaining more online friends every day.
But 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 that I had not only grown to love, but that helped me find my career path with WordPress.com.
Blockers
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
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.
First, let’s talk about time.
Carve out 10 minutes per day
I was once a member of a group who met weekly to write together. We often did what’s called a free-write: 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.
Timer
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 a 6AM workout, when an early morning run 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 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.
Pro-tip
Use an alarm to remind yourself to write
To really make this work, here’s a pro-tip: Create a trigger. Carve out a specific time of day and create a cue 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: a peaceful house in the early morning, or an afternoon cup of coffee to go with your writing time. Pairing a trigger, like an alarm, with a reward, like coffee, will help you build a habit of writing every day.
Keep topics on hand
The ten-minute write takes care of the time issue, but what about topics?
Prompt box
Again, I’ll turn to a writing group strategy. At our gatherings, we placed a silver engraved 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 thunderstorms, rolling pins, and salt marshes. 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 or some other vessel. Whenever you sit down to write, if you have nothing to say, pull a prompt out and start writing.
Timer + Prompt Box = Writing
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. That’s it.
Does this really work? What about editing?
Case study
The 10-minute write motto
In April 2015, I dedicated to publishing a 10-minute write every day for 30 days. Each morning, beginning March 31, 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, tagged the post AprilDaily, then scheduled the post to publish the following morning.
The scheduling delay allowed me to do additional editing if I wanted to, but I rarely did. Why didn’t I edit? Because during that month, I learned to live by this 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. Visitor 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.
Get writing
So how do you get started? Create a prompt box. Make a list of 20 things you love: moss, mountains, bacon, brioche. When you are out in the world, whether eavesdropping in a coffee shop or watching an acorn roll across the sidewalk, make notes of objects or scenes that strike you. Record a voice memo on your phone or ink these ideas on your hand if you have to so you can remember them. When you return home, add those mementos to your prompt box.
Then? Write.
Pro-tips
If you’re really worried about editing, set your timer for 7 minutes to give yourself 3 minutes for edits.
Write every day, but publish every other day. This 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 a handful of 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.
AprilDaily posts, where I published a 10-minute write every day during the month of April
NovemberDaily posts, where I replicated the AprilDaily experiment and had similar results with increases in visitors and and views
If you have questions or decide to try publishing in 10 minutes per day, I’d love to hear about it. Let’s keep the conversation going with the hashtag #10minwri. Have fun!
Special thanks to my writing partners at The Joyful Quill for introducing me to the 10-minute-write, and to Luca Sartoni and GetSpeak.in for the tremendous support helping me prepare for this presentation.
This Friday, day after tomorrow, I will be among WordPress enthusiasts from around the world at the Philadelphia Convention Center, and I will deliver a lightning talk — a 10-minute presentation — titled Publish in 10 Minutes Per Day.
I am speaking at the inaugural WordCamp US, and it is my first WordCamp talk. To use a word coined by my friend and colleague Krista Stevens when she dove into live chat for the first time, I am terricited.
Earlier this week, thanks to a local webmaster and blogger who I met through my blog, I rehearsed in an auditorium on the Virginia Tech campus. Gloria Schoenholtz, photoblogger at Virginia Wildflowers, left a comment on my Trying not to freak out blog post (where I was freaking out about my talk) and she invited me to practice in the auditorium downstairs from her office. I took her up on the offer on Monday. I invited my local friend Dorothy, of Birch Nature, Gloria invited a Communications professor, and before you know it, I was in the zone, with an audience, presenting.
Gloria, Dorothy, and Lindsey provided valuable feedback that I wouldn’t have gotten from practicing alone in my office (come out from behind the podium, be myself, smile 🙂 ). After rehearsing with them, I am still terricited, but the scale has tipped so that I am now a tiny bit more excited than terrified.
If you are attending WordCamp US and are interested in building a regular publishing habit, I will be in the Kite & Key room of the Philadelphia Convention Center at 5:50 PM on Friday, December 4. There are still a handful of WordCamp US tickets available ($40 for both days), or if Philly is too far for you to travel to, Live Stream tickets are also available.
On Friday, I’ll post my talk here on Butterfly Mind. I invite you to use the hashtag #10minwri on social media to ask questions or to share your own adventures in publishing in 10-minutes per day. I can’t wait to see what you write.
Butterfly Mind 