From Journaling To Blogging
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Not as easy as it might seem.
There came a time in my many years of journaling that I thought I could easily write a blog post when I was ready to. I thought this until I tried. Then I found out the truth…
Just because one has spent lots of time writing their heart out in journals doesn’t mean they can automatically create an engaging blog post.
As I began to try out blogging, being able to write at length on a subject, and to make the entire piece cohesive, I found it didn’t come very quickly, or easily to me. It only came about with more time, practice, and intention.
This was because, as a journal writer, I would write in any old fashion I wanted to, much of it had no structure. Some of it did, but most of it did not. Much of it was just ideas, or fragments of thoughts. Even more of it was complete “stream of consciousness” type writing.
Putting together a blog post was an entirely different animal. I had to develop different skills, and ways of thinking in order to construct one. My beginnings were clumsy, and slow. I could only create maybe a few short paragraphs on a subject, and then I didn’t know what else to write. It wasn’t like my normal “stream of consciousness” writing in which I could easily fill pages, and pages. It was frustrating.
It took me some time to figure out what to do about this, how to create an interesting post of some length. I realized I had to learn to be more focused on a subject, and at the same time learn to bring different facets together, making it all cohesive… something I wasn’t use to.
One day, while looking back over past journals, I realized what to do. I saw that there were similar bits and pieces of my writing tucked away in various journals that could be put together to create a substantial blog post. I plucked those pieces out of my journals, and very carefully reworked them to create flow, and syntax. It was fun, and I had taught myself something about constructing a good piece of writing.
Over time as I kept doing this, and seeing what it took to create such a piece, I began to construct blog posts without having to always pull pieces from here and there. Eventually, I could just sit, and create a post from what I held inside.
