Thursday, November 29, 2007

Blogging About Blogging

Deb Ng from Freelance Writing Jobs wrote a little piece over at Performancing (great place, btw) on getting your blog ready for the new year. She mentioned several points, but I really took away these three to put to use over here at LWAOT.

1. Create specific activities to occur on certain days of the week. I've already been plotting this one out. From Mon. to Fri. each day will have a theme, topic, or what-have-you.

  • Monday - Book Reviews/Writing News
  • Tuesday - Random Thoughts
  • Wednesday - Whiny Wednesday
  • Thursday - Article on one of the topics for the month (See below)
  • Friday - Writing Wrap-up/Friday Snippet (maybe)

2. Create an editorial calendar for your blog. You know, like the magazines use to tell them what topic or area to focus on that month. So, I started jotting down ideas that sort of tie together for each month. For example, for January, I jotted down the following ideas: Resolutions, Weight Loss, Exercise, Quitting smoking. For my Thursday article, I can use these to build some writing samples.

3. Use your date/time stamp to let you work ahead on your material and have it appear on your blog when you want. I don't think blogger really supports this capability, as I've yet to find something on it. Wordpress, however, I believe has some code junkies out there that will let you do this. So, I'll see what I need to do.

I think these things could really up the content of my blog, which I've wanted to do. We'll see how it goes. Things don't always work the way I want them to.

11 comments:

Arachne Jericho said...

Schedules are great for professional blogging.

Blogger does not yet support Posts From the Future; you can write them and keep them as draft, and alter their posting timestamp into the future, but they still always show up when you hit publish. Wordpress supports this natively right now, I believe. I stick with Blogger because eventually they will fill out the feature set and am patient to wait; until then, I hit my blog every day to hit 'publish' on the stuff that I wrote before.

I tend to just use blogging as playtime, which means it's all unstructured for me; I try to follow John Scalzi's philosophy of Whatever, in that you need something (big or small) on your blog everyday, even if it's just a picture of a cat. Helps to have thoughtful pieces, of course, and to acknowledge people's comments.

Peter Damien said...

Wordpress does it wonderfully. I just recently used it, as we know.

Blogger can do it, but it involves various plugins, all of which are a pain in the rhymes-with-bass and are not worth messing with. Ever so steadily, Tori, I will lure you over to the WordPress Side of the world! Er. Or something.

Boring-technology aside: I look forward to seeing how you work, and how you blog more. I enjoy reading your stuff, what little you post here (honest, you're a more prolific commenter on my blog than on your own blog, not that I mind) and like the idea of seeing you fill out subjects. I wish I had the mental acuity for structured blogging. All my structured blog articles tend to turn into articles I try to sell.

I'll keep reading, you keep writing. Deal?

Midnight Muse said...

I like your idea, and I truly hope it means you'll blog more ! I enjoy coming over here and reading your posts - which means you need to post more :D

I could do with more structure in my blog, but I've recently invented a Friday Thing, and that's a big step for me. Mostly the blog is my cure for sitting and staring at AW for no good reason. That, and I tend to go on and on and . . . well, you get the idea !

Tori O. said...

I'm trying to do some structured unstructure in there. Tuesdays are random, so who know what I'll think up to write about? And Wednesdays are all for ranting.

Often, Pete, I don't want to post from work, and it's easy to comment over at CPD. I hate not having full access to things at work. My old job let me.

Really, I'm trying not to make this too hard for me, and it may be that I have to implement days at a time. It depends on what the crap load of stuff is at the time.

Peter Damien said...

I figured that's why you commented more than you posted, honestly. So I wouldn't worry about it. I'm just glad you'll be posting more.

Mary B said...

I'm also glad you'll be posting more. And BTW: I have added your link to Thingymablog. I'm adding stuff bit by bit and I'm slow.

Lori A. Basiewicz said...

You've got me, Tori. I have a slight schedule going on The Commune, but I don't do monthly themes, just a rotation I circulate through. I think they're good things. It helps establish a routine and takes some of the, "Ohmigawd, what am I going to write about?" out of the process.

I do enjoy your posts. I hope you'll be able to write more, but don't stress if life gets in the way. Just do what you can. That's all any of us can do.

Cath said...

Hey, these are great ideas, thanks for sharing them! :)

Ed Wyrd said...

A schedule? You mean, as in organized? Bwahahahaha! My writer doesn't work that way. He's sporatic and spontaneous. Forcing him to a schedule would kill him.

Lori A. Basiewicz said...

Tori, when does the new schedule go into effect?

Tori O. said...

I'm thinking at the beginning of the new year, as things are a bit nuts right now. Perhaps later this month, if things go right.