8 Ways To Get Started on That Online Writing

You know the feeling. I know you do. If you're reading this, it's probably because you read blogs because you also write for blogs. And that means you've had this moment seen here: when you've got to write something and you can no longer ignore what has to be done.

Some writing. 

The deadline looms but instead you get busy dusting the keyboard and watering the plants. You run to the sofa and pound on your forehead, think think think. We know this isn't going to push the minutes away of when you have to hit submit, but we do it anyway. It's time to get serious about the writing that you have DUE.

When it's hard to get the faucet of prose flowing and meet that promise of copy delivered, there is only one road to take: BDIC, get yer butt down in chair. But the butt part isn't enough: we've got to leave our editor swooning over what we've submitted and have them clanging their chime-balls in hope that they reverberate to the writing heavens above and we can provide more than just the basic asked for. 

That's a nice scene, I know, I daydream about it often. But I can’t promise you that. I can tell you how to get a blog post in on time and cleaned up like nobody's business, though.

I offer you a Monday gift (surprise!), because I believe we all find ourselves in the writing trenches. I know we do:

A Guide for the online writer who needs to BDIC and then some:

1.You must tell yourself exactly what to do and how to do it.

 Like this:

 #1.) Sit down, Alexandra

 #2.) Put fingers on keys, Alexandra

 #3.) Type out what you’re saying out loud

#4.)  No bathroom breaks no eating lemon poppy seed cake until you have a rough draft down

2.Get some fresh air from a walk or a drive after you've got the bones down. Stepping inside a computer to live is too much like a Twilight Zone episode. Have a life off the internet so you have something to talk about when you do try to stick your head into that little blue screen again.

3.Keep a notebook, papers, voice recorders, pens, pencils, anything handy so you can write down notes of anything in your day that might make a story. In the grocery store this morning, I saw an adorable older gentleman with the healthiest makings on the conveyor belt for a salad. It was wonderful, but it was just enough for only one, and it broke my heart a little. A story started in my head, and when I got to my car, I wrote down just the beginnings of something I can flesh out later. My notebooks stashed all over the places of my life may be a sight, but you know what it really says: I can use this outline later. (and my notebooks have saved me many a dry well of a time)

4.Commit your own writer’s mantra to memory and begin your day with it. Writers write, is what works for me.

5.Go write. You can't wait for the opportune time, it never comes. Write, if it's 10 minutes, it's 10 minutes. And a start.

6.Sit down and before you start at the keys, breathe. Then nod your head like you’re a conductor ready to direct your orchestra. Look up at the screen, hovering your hands over. Ready? And... now get up and go to the bathroom, have a snack, drink some soda, look out the window, pull out your phone and look at it, go to the bathroom, then come back and sit down for two minutes. Breathe in deep a few times… Repeat until you decide to kick yourself in the ass and start already!

7.Next time you sit and write, don't think of it as work. Feel how you are doing what you've been drawn to do every since you can remember. You like to write, it takes you to your Zen place and time disappears. Get lost in it. Realize you love writing for a reason. Remember we're lucky.

8. Scare the shit out of yourself when you realize that to be a writer, you have to write. Promise--this will make you pound out the fastest blog post in history.

Now get busy and get down with some choice words: it’s what writers do.

 

"The hardest part, is always the start."

 

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