I’ve been playing with words all my life, but no matter what genre I was engaged in, from limericks to legal thesis, there were always times of writer’s block.  Recently I began blogging and I found this phenomenon followed me there as well.  I’m honored that Bean has asked me to share about this issue, but frankly it’s most likely that she considers me an expert at drawing a blank.  I’m not sure what worked best for the college papers I wrote as that was long ago and the memory’s fading.  I just know that days would go by looking at the screen wondering “what now”.  Somehow I met all my deadlines, but that was then.  I also started a biography about a friend of mine, Midge who’d passed away many years ago only to encounter the same issue.  Then, at a conference near Durango this fall, Rhonda relayed information  that gave me an “aha” moment and broke that 10-year block.  She was talking about Historical Fiction and my brain went “aha”!  So although most of it will center around the antecdotes of her life, it will be historically accurate, but not exactly her life story. I may actually get that book done now.

In the Blogging Basics course there was instruction on this problem and several great links for ideas on combating the dilemma.  After reading the bulk of the articles on writers’ block for bloggers, I began perusing the internet and was instantly attracted to this article on Overcoming Writers’ Block because of the humor of the author.  Then, I began searching the whole website’s offerings and found a lot of informative and constructive help from clustering ideas to final completion and everything in between.  If you’re serious about honing your skills, it’s a super place to check out.

Who knew that physical exercise could be the first step to overcoming writer’s block?

Susie was a student in last session’s Blogging Basics course, she is now blogging about approaching life and art with a playful attitude at LafnPlayground.

Feeling stuck with your blog? Want to start a blog but not sure where to start? Journal blogs can be really helpful, even cathartic at times. People have benefitted from journal writing for years and now online journals give you another medium to do so. But having another means of doing it doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to start sometimes!
Mary, a former blog student and a LVS Online Instructor, posted some good ideas on different types of journals on her blog. In her post she also provides some additional links to help you with journalling. If you are wanting a journal style of blog, you might also be interested in taking one of her memoir classes. She is offering a $3 off coupon on her blog to sweeten the deal. Here are more details about the Writing Your Memoirs class.

Why in the world would I want to talk about someone else’s blog on MY blog?
Pingbacks or trackbacks are vital aspects of blogging because:

• It provides additional context to your own opinions and ideas
• Other blogs are a source of inspiration when confronted with “writer’s block”
• A means to share ideas, causes and products that you have discovered with your audience
• A very focused means of directing readers with similar interests to your own blog. Talk about your niche marketing!
• Jumpstarts communications with other bloggers. Where many bloggers won’t have the time to check out the links on all of their commentators, most bloggers will want to follow a pingback to see what others are saying about them. This is true for even the really famous ones out there. Check out my post on giveaways where I pingbacked Lorelle of WordPress fame.
• If you talk about other bloggers, and have something worth talking about on your own blog, they are more likely to be talking about you!

On this blog, you will often find that I refer to other blogs in my blog posts. I do this for two reasons. The first is that I want to bring certain ideas to your attention to certain blogging topics. Second, I am hoping that my post will inspire you to visit the other blog for additional information and to expand your reference resources.  Therein, lies the power of blogging.

So, if I wanted to show my readers an example of good writing and how to engage with your readers on a personal level I might write a post about Barb’s post on Scrapbook or Art Journal: Its a Personal Journey. To make it an educational post, I would identify key themes and techniques in the writing of that post that make it so successful. I would compare and contrast it with another great example of student writing with Shoshanna’s post Hiding out from the Third Millenium.

If I was stuck and frustrated with writer’s block, I could tap into Val’s post on Literary Finds and the post Please Don’t Eat the Daisies. Those posts might inspire me to think and write about classic books, the books that I grew up with or a lament on current literature. I could go a variety of directions from those posts from a critical literary review to a discussion on how popular books impact the culture of their day to…

We have a lot of instructors in this class. Maybe they have been too busy to check out all of their classmates’ blogs and have missed out on the great instructor references that Karen provides us with her post Use Free Online Resources to Teach Your Online Courses.   Because we know that no matter how busy they are, they will make time to read the all the posts in the class blog! ;-P

If you take a look at the posts that I have mentioned in this post, you will see that there is a pingback to here in the comment section of the post. Well there will be, if the blog owners decide to approve the ping back.

It happens to every writer. There are those days when your creative fountain of ideas has run dry and you are confronted with an empty screen.  Journal or diary bloggers could just detail their errands and comings and going, but that tends to bore the writer not to mention the reader!

On Problogger today, Darren Rowse wrote a post titled “5 Ideas to Come Up with Blog Content from Your Daily Life“.  Although I could see how his five ideas could help generate content, I was more intrigued by his diagram that showed Daily Life – Capture – Repurpose. Instead of just telling your readers that you ate your favorite Indian dal for dinner, share the recipe with them and/or tempt them with a photo of your feast.  Darren is correct in stating that sharing your “latest meal” is probably not going to be appropriate for most topic bloggers like those that blog on collector cars or wilderness photography. It is totally appropriate for the journal blogger or the blogger that focuses on food or delectable delights. Capture how you do things and what they look like. Web surfers are used to a multimedia experience and if you incorporate images and video, you will cater to their surfing expectations. You could type out an anecdote that you want to share with your readers, but think of how much more engaging that story might be with your vocal inflections and facial expressions in a video. There is a reason that You-Tube is as popular as it is. Humans like to watch!

Recapture can be viewed as recycling your blog content in a fresh and innovative way. Using a guest blogger to respond more in depth or to give their point of view on a prior post can encourage additional dialog. Your guest doesn’t even need to be actually written by another human. If you have been blogging about your toddler on your parenting blog and feeling overwhelmed, try writing a blog post from the perspective  of your two year old. It will probably be amusing and maybe even enlightening. When I worked on a blog for an organic farm, and we were too busy farming to actually blog, I would often ask customers if I could share their emails on the blog. I could post their rapture over the fresh luscious organic raspberrries that they got from us last week and attach a brief note about berry status this week. It allowed me to consolidate my time, provide another point of view on the berries, and answer questions about berry availability, all at once. Another way to recapture content is to provide updates. In another blog, I frequently post about bills in the local legislature. If they passed or failed, got vetoed or signed, I can provide update to my readers and allow me to voice again my concerns or congratulations on how the government is handling an issues.