Tag: imagination

Check Yourself for These 7 Symptoms of the Blogger’s Curse

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 17 Comments

Are you burdened by the blogger’s curse?

Many a blogger is hindered with a trait that damages productivity and constrains their ultimate potential.

See if you recognize any of these seven symptoms in yourself:

  1. You start writing, stop half way and hit delete
  2. You often feel like you are your own worst critic
  3. You never feel like you’ve done the best you could
  4. You second-guess your ideas, even when you know better
  5. Other bloggers make you feel inadequate
  6. There’s always something more to learn
  7. Writing would be so much more enjoyable if you could just relax

Thankfully, if you do recognize any of the above symptoms, you are definitely not alone. In fact, I would say each and every blogger I’ve met has felt the same at least once (and likely more often then they’d like to admit).

So relax, this curse doesn’t have to be permanent and is simple to treat. It even has a name.

Continue reading “Check Yourself for These 7 Symptoms of the Blogger’s Curse” →

5 Easy Steps to Writing a Great Blog Post

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 77 Comments

People think that writing is a magic skill, mostly because it seems you’re creating something out of nothing.

It’s not.

It’s not magic, it’s not a genuine act of creation.

It’s part art, part craft. It’s a lot more perspiration than inspiration.

You start with a given set of resources (ideas and a little time), learn the right way to put those resources together, and you’ll write a blog post.

That being said, here’s how to write a great blog post in five easy steps. Continue reading “5 Easy Steps to Writing a Great Blog Post” →

How to Find Your Blogging Muse

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 18 Comments

A blank page.

There’s nothing more terrifying for a writer. Not an actual blank page, of course, but a Word Document with no words on it, that mysterious absence of words that is amplified by us staring at the white screen of death for so long that we feel our brains exploding.

You think and think and think, but nothing is happening, no matter how hard you try.

It makes you feel… powerless. Frustrated. Angry. Sad. Bitter. Sure, it’s your mind, your thoughts, your words, but there’s a bit of magic to writing, like Tinkerbell sprinkling lost boys with pixie dust and enabling them to fly.

No amount of happy thoughts will help you fly without the pixie dust. You need that extra bit of magic, that spark that makes your words take flight.

Where does that magic come from?

Well, from your blogging muse, of course. Continue reading “How to Find Your Blogging Muse” →

50 Ways to Become a Better Blogger

~ Jordan Peters ~ 132 Comments

Do you want to become a better blogger? Silly question, eh.

In that case, I’ve got some great news. The best way to become a better blogger is to blog. And to keep blogging.

If this blogging thing is difficult and frustrating, then you must force yourself to do it, and do it, and do it, until you get better at it.

As bloggers, we have to produce words daily – even when we don’t feel like it. Even replying to comments or e-mails is a good way to enhance one’s creativity.

Then there are a number of thing we can do to become better at this blogging thing. Quite a few of them… Continue reading “50 Ways to Become a Better Blogger” →

Do You Want to Be a Prolific Blogger? Here’s How

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 32 Comments

I did a bit of counting today: this year I wrote 318 blog posts on this blog, 234 blog posts on my main blog,  plus 373 posts on irevuo, for a total of 925 posts.

Granted, let’s say half of those are reposts, advertising, or not that long to be considered actual writing, like Quote of the Day on irevuo.

Still, I wrote over three hundred and fifty blog posts across eleven months. On average, that’s more than one blog posts per day. I also wrote and released a book on blogging, wrote a few chapters from some of my fiction projects, and a couple of short stories.

Oh, and the emails and comments. Never underestimate the amount of keys one has to punch in other to reply to thousands of e-mails and comments every week.

The stats say I’m prolific, but this doesn’t mean I spend most of my time writing posts.

Actually, I think you’d be surprised by how much time I actually spend writing. It’s just not as much as you’d think.

This is why I am writing this post. Because there are a few strategies that I employ to write as fast as possible.

Because the truth is that writing blog posts is something you can do with ease, as long as you approach the process in a certain way. Continue reading “Do You Want to Be a Prolific Blogger? Here’s How” →

[Blogging Mindset] If You Stand for Nothing, You’ll Fall for Anything

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 7 Comments

Truth be told, I could sum up this post with a simple sentence: Fight for your ideas!

We can get technical, we can list dozens of rules of writing, blogging, curating online content, sharing it on social media, we can talk about properly formatting your blog posts, or writing captivating introductions, but the truth is that if you do not believe in what you are writing, if you are not in this with all your heart, then it’s all for nothing.

Like those books on body language that teach you various trick on how to feel confident… well, it’s more like how to display confidence. The truth that they cannot admit because no one would buy such books is that if you are confident, truly feel at ease with yourself, then it does not matter how you stand, how you hold your hands, and all that. Continue reading “[Blogging Mindset] If You Stand for Nothing, You’ll Fall for Anything” →

A Glimpse Behind the Scenes of a Successful Blog

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 32 Comments

Believe it or not, being successful as a blogger does not mean blogging is somehow easy. Sometimes it can be fun, while other times it can feel like a daunting chore.

The truth is that we often focus obsessively on failure, but don’t realize that success has its own cons as well.

Curious to know how it feels to be a successful blogger? Read on. Continue reading “A Glimpse Behind the Scenes of a Successful Blog” →

Are You a Hoarder (of Ideas)?

~ Jordan Peters ~ 27 Comments

Imagine this, if you will.

An old woman, near the end of her life. Shivering in a fleabag apartment without heat in the winter. Walking four miles each way to the food bank, to carry home unmarked cans of mystery meat. Not even a cat to keep her company, because cat food is expensive.

Then one day she dies, and the neighbors find $2.7 million wadded up in her mattress.

It’s a natural human impulse to hold on to what we have. We figure we can handle whatever discomforts we might be facing now, and who knows how bad it could get down the line? So we hoard, saving up our riches for some mythical later time.

What does this have to do with writing?

Everyone who writes faces this at some point. We come up with a powerful idea, something we think will capture a lot of attention. This is the kind of content we know we need to grow our blog and our business.

So of course we can’t waste it on our measly 300 subscribers (or 100, or 12). We scribble our great idea on a Post-it so we remember to write it up when we hit some magic number of subscribers–500 or 1000 or 10,000.

The Post-it gets dusty. We never hit that magic number. Because we took our best content ideas and stuffed them into a mattress. We didn’t think our small audience was good enough for amazing content, so we never got a larger audience. Continue reading “Are You a Hoarder (of Ideas)?” →

Struggling with Writer’s Block? Here are 3 Simple Steps to Beat it

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 44 Comments

Personally, I like the term creative bankruptcy more, but no matter how we’d name it, not being able to do something you love, that normally works like a dream, is incredibly frustrating.

This is your passion we’re talking about, not some boring, mindless chore that must be done.

And then, if you’re a professional blogger or author, you’ve got deadlines, you’ve got to earn a living.

And if words have abandoned you, who are you going to be? You’re a writer, right? Writers write, right?

So who are you if you can’t write?

A nobody?

Deep inside,  you know that’s nonsense.

Once a writer, always a writer. There’s no going back. Like being pulled from the Matrix.

But try telling yourself that late at night when all you managed to write for the day would fit comfortably inside a Tweet.

Now, there are many different types of creative block, and plenty of ways to tackle them and get back to writing.

But your time is limited, so we need to address this issue in a little less than a thousand words, so here are three critically important things for you to remember about being creatively blocked.
Continue reading “Struggling with Writer’s Block? Here are 3 Simple Steps to Beat it” →