Bring Your Blogging Muse Back to Life

If you feel that your blogging mojo is flagging, sometimes all it needs is a jolt — or a series of such — to kick it back into gear.

For many of us bloggers, dealing with the minutiae of our non-blogging lives and getting stuck in a routine are our biggest momentum killers. Sometimes it’s also self-doubt, running out of things to say, or other distractions that take the life out of blogging. It can be anything at all.

You’re in the process of brainstorming for new content and someone’s at the door. Or you’re drafting your umpteenth post and the phone rings. Or someone tells you that your blog sucks and you begin to question your worth as a blogger.
And just like that, your muse is dead.
Now getting yourself unstuck takes a lot of work and willpower. There are no shortcuts to getting back on track once you’ve hit a slump, but you can try these tips to help bring back the joy into your blogging, even if you have to do it one day at a time.
1. Post about what you like. It’s a cliche and this may be especially challenging for niche bloggers, but the trick is to figure in your interests in some of your entries — even if it means comparing your assigned subject (eg. trucks) to your favorite cheeseburger.

Making your interests relevant to your blog posts can remind you of what really motivates you in life, and it adds a fun challenge to your writing as well.

2. Practice typing fast. Slow typing can slow down your conceptualization process, because your thoughts have to keep pace with your fingers. Typing fast allows you to quickly see your ideas taking shape in a shorter timespan, so you don’t lose momentum. Take a typing speed test or use a timer.
3. Switch projects or schedules. If you write about different topics for different blogs at different times, switch them around. Schedule permitting, change the order of topics that you write, or change the time of day that you post. This is the equivalent of brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand; the point is to refresh your brain by readjusting its routine.
4. Sharpen your writing skills. Whether you’re a novice or a seasoned blogger, you will benefit from engaging in writing exercises from time to time. For novices, this is a great way to polish your grammar and vocabulary, and for experts, this helps refresh your skill set. This also helps boost your confidence about producing quality content.
5. Move! If you have the luxury of changing your writing location, do it. Take your blogging device with you to a coffee shop, a library, outside of your house, or just switch rooms and work there. Again, this is to shift your mind’s focus from the familiar to the new. If you’re short on space, face another wall.

6. Try a different blogging style. If you usually resort to bulleted or itemized blog posts like I do, try two-liner blog entries. Or publish your post in a letter format. Or use pictures instead of words. Or publish a voice recording. This can help you discover other communication methods that might just work for your blog.
7. Remember your reasons for blogging. Sometimes all we need is to take a moment to remember and reevaluate our blogging goals, whether it’s to help support our loved ones, to help us earn enough money for that gadget we want, to become well-known, or even simply because we’re good at it. Recalling the main driving force behind our blogging activity can rekindle love for it, the way remembering a first date or a first kiss can rekindle a tepid romance.

Other tactics you can apply are redesigning your blog site, putting keywords together, doodling your ideas, solving mental puzzles, and reading through your best and favorite blog posts.

The key to reviving your blog is to engage in activities that reenergize your mind while keeping it focused on your blogging tasks. Taking a break from blogging may also be helpful to an extent, but done too long or too often, it runs the risk of detaching you completely from meeting your goals.

My favorites from the list are 1, 3, 4, and 7, plus solving puzzles at random and reading about blogging success stories. These help keep me inspired and grounded during those off-days. And boy, do I have off-days!

Have you tried out these techniques to kick up your blogging activity? If you have other helpful tips to share via the comments section, I’d be glad to try them out!

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