By Miss January 2013, Stephanie McCratic (who may or may not have watched way too much of the Miss America pageant, making her selection as AWB Blogger of the Month particularly timely…) Read her bio, visit Evolved Mommy, and don’t miss her video acknowledgement of her title complete with tiara.
Y’all, I’ve got blogger burnout. Bad.
This happens from time-to-time, and usually goes as fast as it came, but writing is my favorite hobby, so when the words aren’t there I start to get a little twitchy.
What causes blogger burnout?
- The holidays
- A boring life (this can actually be a good thing for life, but bad for writing)
- An overextended, overbooked schedule
- Nothing at all
- When writing or blogging is also part of your job
- Tuesdays
It doesn’t matter what causes it. What matters is that I trust the burnout will re-ignite into a fire in my fingers and a hot itch to type. Yep. A hot itch. Because sometimes writing is like a venereal disease that just won’t go away. If you love to express yourself through writing, but hit a dry spot, do not worry! You’re writing VD will again flare up and you’ll be over-sharing again in no time.
How to reignite your writing passion
- Put your fingers on your keyboard and type something. Even if it’s just a Word document and you never publish it. Write it anyway.
- Invite guests to post on your blog in the meantime (you’ll see quite a bit of this on Evolved Mommy right now)
- Create short posts or wordless, image-only posts
- Find a focus, like One Little Word
- Write about your burnout. Chances are your readers can relate.
- Save your words. Don’t share everything on Facebook. Save it for your blog. Then share that on Facebook.
These are just some of the tricks I use to get that hot burning itch back. What do you do?
I also find it helpful to keep a list of blog ideas running. The problem is getting the energy and focus to write on something that isn’t “inspired.”
Jamie,
I do this, but I never go back and look at my ideas, which defeats the purpose. Where do you keep your ideas? Are they on post its? In a notebook? Or on your computer?
Love the “save your words”. So true. When I’m in a writing slump I read my favorite blogs — or great books. Reading awesome words can unearth a long-dormant memory/ story idea or just plain renew me.
My greatest inspiration lately has come from reading other blogs and talking to my blogger friends in real life… actually seeing them in person.
We are blessed in Arkansas to have so many fabulous bloggers that there’s almost always someone nearby who can meet for coffee.
Jamie, I also keep a notebook with blog ideas handy. Sometimes I think of something to be my “next post,” then it will get bumped because of something else that comes up. But I always have the idea to remember later. I write down everything because my memory is crap.
Rhonda,
My memory is crap to. I have to write everything down. There’s an Arkansas author who wrote a book called “The 7 Minute Solution” (I can’t remember her name) who explained that short term memory is only 20-ish seconds long, so as soon as you think of it write it down. This made me feel so much better about my fleeting thoughts.