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10 Ways to Kill the Kudzu and Get Your Blogging Mojo Back

September 4, 2007 by Liz

Time to Kill the Blogging Kudzu

Kudzu. It creeping and invasive. It’s a slow moving pest that overtakes our most creative thoughts. It’s not writer’s block. It’s not procrastination either. I call it The Blogging Kudzu.

Blogging Kudzu is debilitating. Like its vegetative counterpart, left uncontrolled it obliterates new ideas. It covers them right over. The nasty creeper wraps around our brain, cuts off our creativity. It leaves us dead in the water, wondering whether we even want to blog at all again, ever.

BUT unlike the green, leafy version, we can clear out the kudzu in our heads without much trouble. We can get our mojo back. In fact, we can come back stronger than ever, if that’s the goal we set our minds to, and why wouldn’t we? A blog’s quite an investment to let wither and die.

Here’s how to kill Blogging Kudzu and come back better than ever.

10 Ways to Kill the Kudzu and Get Your Blogging Mojo Back

The first thing to know is Blogging Kudzu needs two conditions to flourish — a tired blogger, who takes blogging a bit too seriously. With that in mind, here are 10 Ways to Get Your Blogging Mojo Back.

Peel off your blog. Get out from behind the dashboard. Turn off the computer. Stay away a day. Watch what happens. Nothing. The blogosphere doesn’t need us to make sure it survives.

Have a heart-to-heart conversation with yourself. Point out that the lasting links you’ve made are with people, not bits of code. Those links will still be there when you get back from recharging and refueling.

Make plans. Have an experience. It hard to blog your experience, if you never have one. If you’re out of practice, ask a friend to plan something for you to do together. Then, for blog’s sake, go do it!

Do something spontaneous. Go to a farm, a city, a movie, a concert, a planetarium, a museum, a place you’ve never been, a place you’ve been a 1000 times, a place you grew up, a place a famous person lived, a place you don’t know where it is until you get there.

Have a real conversation. Call a friend you haven’t spoken with in too long. Catch up on all of the details of life.

Sit in the sunshine and watch the sky. Do your best to think about nothing. When your mind gets busy, read your favorite book or make up stories about the people who walk by.

Tell people you’re a web publisher. Ask them to tell you a story. Listen to every detail. Watch how they tell it. Capture every gesture and expression in your memory. Ask questions until you feel you are a part of their experience.

Ask advice from a child under the age of 7. Listen carefully. Repeat back what you are told to be sure you understand. Then do your best to follow it, if you possibly can.

Spend some quality time with yourself, your favorite music, and your favorite food. Make an appointment to do that. You deserve to be the center of your own time once in a while.

Read your favorite blog posts in your archives — the ones that you love, those that show your best self in action. Now go do what you do so well just one more time.

Once in my publishing career, I told a friend I couldn’t get my head to think about what I needed to write. She gave me this advice.

Go take a day off, take two, take three. On the day you come back, you’ll do 5 days work 10 times better than if you keep going now. You’ll find yourself miles ahead, and everyone else will be trying their best just to keep up.

She was right.

That’s how to get your blogging mojo back.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

You Can’t Write My Blog Post

April 25, 2007 by Liz

A Bad Facsimile

She came into my office and sat across the desk from me. She might have been the brightest person I ever hired. I know she is the best.

We were meeting on her first lesson for a teacher guide that she was working on. Her name was J.

I looked down at the lesson. I looked up at J. I said, “Do you like this lesson?”

J said, “Do I like the lesson? Well it has this, and this, and that.”

I repeated myself. “I said, “Do you like this lesson?”

J said, “Well it has that, and that, and this.”

So, I said, “J. This isn’t a test. Do you like this lesson? Would you actually teach from it?”

“Oh no! I wrote what I thought you wanted. I’d never teach it like that.”

J get this straight. You can’t write my lesson. I can’t write yours either. If we tried we’d both just fail miserably — we’d both write bad facsimiles. I’d write a bad facsimile of your lesson. You’d write a bad facsimile of mine.

Writing a blog works the same. You can’t write my blog post. I can’t write yours either. What I can do is pay attention to how you do things and find my own version of doing them that makes sense for me.

I can’t write your blog post.

But I can find my version. That blog post that would be only me.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
SOBCon 07 It’s incredible. Are you coming?

Put Yourself into What You Write

April 24, 2007 by Liz

Sounds Obvious — So Why Do I Forget?

It’s a simple thought.

When you’re feeling like your writing has no life, put yourself into it. It’s your story, and that’s the tale I want to hear.

If you write about a business book that you just read, put yourself into it. What was it like for you to read it? Did you remember something you used to know? Did it get you inspired to try a new approach? Were you bored? Did it get you jazzed?

If you write about a blog that you’ve discovered, tell me how you reacted to it. What was the one thing that you found compelling? What surprised you? What was your response to the folks in the comment box?

From the time that we started talking, we’ve been telling each other stories. If I hear what you heard inside a story, I might want to give something a try. I might not. Either way I’ll keep reading what you wrote to see what your reaction was.

I can find information in lots of places.

But I can only find your story, if you tell me. That’s powerful.

Put yourself into it. You are the human interest in everything you write.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
SOBCon 07 It’s incredible. Are you coming?