My Pearls of Wisdom

BLOGGING WISDOM: WRITE IT BADLY BEFORE YOU WRITE IT BRILLIANTLY

“I wish I was one of those people who could blog easily, who starts writing and it just comes out perfectly,” said the umpteenth person to me the other day. But listen, I seriously doubt these much-envied genius bloggers, whose thoughts connect seamlessly with their words, actually exist. Few people can get their message across succinctly the first time. All the best writers edit their words and then edit them again. Sometimes they’ll screw it up and start all over again – but it’ll be better the second time. Or possibly the third, or even the seventh.

Sometimes you have to write it wrong before you can write it right. You have to see your first draft to work out what’s wrong with it – and then begins the process of getting it right. So if you’re agonising over the best way to get across what you want to say, don’t. Just let your thoughts spill out onto the page or screen. Walk away from it, do something else for a while, take the dog for a walk, cook the dinner, then come back and look at it ‘fresh’. You will find you feel a lot clearer on your angle and lo, your words will come out in the right order.

Still not right? Have a few goes at coming back to it ‘fresh’. Try mimicking the style and approach of a blog writer you admire. Try writing it from a completely different angle. Or rearranging the structure of your thoughts. Write it as bullet points or a series of headings, then flesh it out. Keep the writing process going for a few days and you’ll keep ruminating until a clearer blog message or structure emerges, and you start saying what you really want to say – and in the right order. Stephen King, who is almost as famous for saying clever things about the writing process as he is for his horror books, explains it thus: “To write is human, to edit is divine”. In the editing process you hone your thoughts until they’re razor-sharp. Seeing it ‘wrong’ will often help you nail what you want to say – and then, miraculously, it will come out right.

For one-on-one blog coaching or to get your blog ghost-written, contact me at Ghostbloggers Inc, c/o marina.gask@sky.com.