Jazzed-about-writing Archives

Time to Kill the Blogging Kudzu

Kudzu. It creeping and invasive. It’s a slow moving pest that overtakes our most creative thoughts. It’s not writer’s block. It’s not procrastination either. I call it The Blogging Kudzu.

Blogging Kudzu is debilitating. Like its vegetative counterpart, left uncontrolled it obliterates new ideas. It covers them right over. The nasty creeper wraps around our brain, cuts off our creativity. It leaves us dead in the water, wondering whether we even want to blog at all again, ever.

BUT unlike the green, leafy version, we can clear out the kudzu in our heads without much trouble. We can get our mojo back. In fact, we can come back stronger than ever, if that’s the goal we set our minds to, and why wouldn’t we? A blog’s quite an investment to let wither and die.

Here’s how to kill Blogging Kudzu and come back better than ever.

10 Ways to Kill the Kudzu and Get Your Blogging Mojo Back

The first thing to know is Blogging Kudzu needs two conditions to flourish — a tired blogger, who takes blogging a bit too seriously. With that in mind, here are 10 Ways to Get Your Blogging Mojo Back.

Peel off your blog. Get out from behind the dashboard. Turn off the computer. Stay away a day. Watch what happens. Nothing. The blogosphere doesn’t need us to make sure it survives.

Have a heart-to-heart conversation with yourself. Point out that the lasting links you’ve made are with people, not bits of code. Those links will still be there when you get back from recharging and refueling.

Make plans. Have an experience. It hard to blog your experience, if you never have one. If you’re out of practice, ask a friend to plan something for you to do together. Then, for blog’s sake, go do it!

Do something spontaneous. Go to a farm, a city, a movie, a concert, a planetarium, a museum, a place you’ve never been, a place you’ve been a 1000 times, a place you grew up, a place a famous person lived, a place you don’t know where it is until you get there.

Have a real conversation. Call a friend you haven’t spoken with in too long. Catch up on all of the details of life.

Sit in the sunshine and watch the sky. Do your best to think about nothing. When your mind gets busy, read your favorite book or make up stories about the people who walk by.

Tell people you’re a web publisher. Ask them to tell you a story. Listen to every detail. Watch how they tell it. Capture every gesture and expression in your memory. Ask questions until you feel you are a part of their experience.

Ask advice from a child under the age of 7. Listen carefully. Repeat back what you are told to be sure you understand. Then do your best to follow it, if you possibly can.

Spend some quality time with yourself, your favorite music, and your favorite food. Make an appointment to do that. You deserve to be the center of your own time once in a while.

Read your favorite blog posts in your archives — the ones that you love, those that show your best self in action. Now go do what you do so well just one more time.

Once in my publishing career, I told a friend I couldn’t get my head to think about what I needed to write. She gave me this advice.

Go take a day off, take two, take three. On the day you come back, you’ll do 5 days work 10 times better than if you keep going now. You’ll find yourself miles ahead, and everyone else will be trying their best just to keep up.

She was right.

That’s how to get your blogging mojo back.

–ME “Liz” Strauss