Do you suffer from blogger block? Are there just some days where it’s near impossible to post because there is little or nothing happening on your particular subject or niche? Share your thoughts.
Personally I suffer it at seemingly random times, random in only that I have no control over the timing, and the more niche the topic the more likely it will occur. In the early days the Blog Herald was actually really hard to write for, mainly because 2 years ago there wasn’t a lot of blogging news. Today it’s a fair bit easier, although some days a harder than others. Now that I write for 4 blogs (or 5 if you include my guest spot here) its even more interesting. Being able to fill in here (and I believe Darren will be back here next week) has been a challenge, mainly because sharing advice or linking to others is sometimes related to mood or inspiration, some days I can be inspired with ideas, others I just ain’t. Blogs like PVRSpot which I really enjoy writting have actually proven hard to write for because the topic is such a niche that there’s not a lot of news, where as The Search Engine Herald presents the challenge of what to actually post because there is so much news about. In a different field I’ve guest blogged at The Gadget Blog when Colbert was away and although there is lots of input I’ve struggled to know how to differentiate the content, which is the blogs aim. How do you deal with a lack, or flood of source material?
I’ve overcome this problem by maintaining a list of topics to blog about and keeping it full of at least 20 ideas minimum. Most of the time I have abundant ideas and don’t need to consult the list, but when I’m drawing a blank, I pick an idea from the list to blog about, and sometimes new ideas are spawned just by scanning the list.
Whenever I get a new idea for a future blog post, I add it to the list. Currently it has 41 ideas on it.
I also made a Suggest a Topic post that generated even more ideas from my readers, and this also allowed me to rank certain ideas in order of interest.
I try to maintain a steady balance between posting and idea generation, so I always have an abundant reserve and maintain a healthy creativity fuel supply.
My site is about graphic designs, it includes downloads, interviews, tutorials and more.
I always keep something for an “emergency case”, an interview, a download, or a tutorial…sometimes it ruins my (very planned) schedule, but i make sure that the blog is updated daily so i prefer ruining my planned schedule over disappointing my visitors.
Heat
Frankly, Duncan, it’s hard to think back to a post where there’s not some form of self-promotion. Don’t get me wrong, you’ve got some solid posts. But, I see you point: it really must be a challenge working the Blog Herald into every other post… :-(
The best way I’ve found to overcome blogger’s block is to go and do updates on old posts. Readers seem to like it and it allows me to go more in depth that I did in the original post.
I’m not so much a ‘news’ blogger so I’m not affected by the flood or lack of news.
[…] erald’s Duncan has been guestblogging on problogger, where he recently posted “Bloggers Block” in which he writes: …sharing advice or linking to othe […]
So far, I haven’t come up with any effective methods of dealing with writer’s block. I look to other blogs for inspiration and, sometimes, opt for off-the-wall info as a way to jolt me out of the slump.
I have no shortage of things to write about, and I could easily make five posts a day; my challenge is finding the time! I’m not yet popular enough to make a living off blogging, though it has proven a good income supplement so far, so I have a day job. And that takes away valuable time from blogging!
I too make a list of things I’d like to blog about just in case there’s a slowdown in the flow of news for my topic (which is incredibly niche) and I am slowly moving away from being a “news” blogger to be more opinionated rather than just aggregating news.
[…] It sure is frustrating, it must be “bloggers block” that many bloggers have talked about. […]