In case you haven’t noticed, there is a huge amount of advice out on the internet about blogging.

It seems that at least half of the “successful” bloggers start writing about how to become successful bloggers.

I am not knocking their advice. Much of it is excellent.

However, most of it misses the main point which is this:

Write.
Just Write.

It is easy to get caught up in all the hullabaloo of what you “need” to do on a blog. But the only real way to be successful at blogging is to

Write.
Write A Lot.

It is not just that writing creates the content, it is much more than that.

Writing creates a flow
that begets more Writing.

There is no substitute for that.

I am sure there is ample neuroscience research that explains why Writing begets Writing, but I could not find it on a long internet search.

(42 tabs open. Found lots of interesting stuff, but searching for supporting documentation is one of the rabbit trails that can derail my writing.)

However, I did find some good quotes from successful writers about the truth of the fact that Writing begets Writing.

“What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.’ And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.'”
Maya Angelou

When asked about the most frightening thing he had ever encountered, novelist Ernest Hemingway said, “A blank sheet of paper.” And none other than the Master of Terror himself, Stephen King, said that the “scariest moment is always just before you start [writing]. After that, things can only get better.”

But the very best one is this from Brian Clark of CopyBlogger:

10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer

  1.  Write.
  2.  Write more.
  3.  Write even more.
  4.  Write even more than that.
  5.  Write when you don’t want to.
  6.  Write when you do.
  7.  Write when you have something to say.
  8.  Write when you don’t.
  9.  Write every day.
10.  Keep writing.

I am guilty of not writing because of buying into the overwhelm of everything that needs to be done for a “successful blog”.

I am guilty of getting stuck because I am trying to learn everything I have been told I need to know:

• How to set up your blog for search engine optimization (SEO).
• How to develop a following, how to use social media in support of your blog, etc.
• Which plugins to add on the backend of this WordPress site.
• How to use Scrivener as a blogging tool.
• How to use MultiMarkdown . . .

And the list could go on and on.

I gave up on trying to use Multimarkdown on this post. I pasted the content into WordPress and have just used the blogging software to get this post to look the way it does. Laborious? Yes. But doing it this way allowed me to hit “Publish”.  And that is what it is all about, isn’t it?