I love blogging. It opens the door to new ideas and provides an interactive channel to the world. People like yourself, stop by and read what I’ve written. Sometime you might leave a comment and the conversation becomes interactive. I want to say thank you for sticking with me for the past two and a half years. It has been a great adventure.
But where do we go from here?
My friends ask me all the time… how do you come up with new things to write about? How do you keep going?
The answer for me is an easy one… the more I blog… the more ideas that come along.
I love to create new things. It might be a post, a free download, or a new logo, or graphic.
As a creative person, my passion is in the idea stage. I love to put the pieces together, move them around until they look just right, and then put them out to the world.
Sometimes they bomb… they crash and burn.
But sometimes they bring a smile to someone else and once in a great while they sprout wings and fly.
Sometimes they plant a seed that doesn’t sprout for years.
Ideas are wonderful!
But I have a problem with ideas. I can’t control when they come. When I try to force them, things can become tedious and sometimes they can be downright frustrating.
When I say to myself… John, set aside every Monday to write about ___blank___, I almost always find myself frustrated.
All of a sudden I’ve gone from I want to to I have to.
This to me is the creative curse.
Yet in blogging or most other forms of writing, organization is key.
As a reader you expect a certain flow of ideas. You expect a beginning, a body, and a conclusion. You expect blog posts to be organized by category or topic. You expect to find what you came for… quickly and easily… or you click away in just a few seconds.
As I look to the new year, I have a lot of ideas for posts. I can easily organize them in my mind.
I might say I will blog three days a week in January about PowerPoint. In February I’ll blog about using Excel for organization… in March I’ll blog about flowcharts.
It’s so easy to organize them in my mind…. yet it’s so hard to keep up the posts day after day.
When I have to do something, especially something that is structured in a strict manner, my creativity wanes.
So what is the answer?
I’m not sure… but I have some ideas I want to try.
1. Build up blog posts and post them in the future. This will allow me to write posts as the ideas flow, but upload them in an organized manner that will make more sense to the reader.
2. Write two or more posts in the same day. Once the creative ideas are flowing… just keep going. This may require weekends or evenings, but may be the answer I’m looking for.
3. Work with a Mastermind group to get fresh ideas and get the creativity going. This might have great potential.
I would love to hear your ideas about creativity. How do you get your ideas? How do you stay motivated? What techniques work for you?
Here is to a creative 2008!
