Beyond today, I’m hoping to not write any more posts that talk about the fact that I’m blogging for the sake of blogging. Since today is initiation day, all bets are off.

There’s several reasons that I’m doing this. Some I mentioned in my previous post. In addition to kick-starting the brain, it also keeps you in practice. Writing can become a rusty art. If you’re like me and were never able to handle the english language and all its intricies appropriately, then the more you oil that machine the better you’ll sound when it really matters. Of course, you could also argue that it will just make me sound like a fool that more often.

Another reason for blogging daily is that it keeps me paying attention to what’s happening on my site. Who’s linking back, what links are broken, comments and spam, monetization, optimization, new themes opportunities, etc. Hopefully the theory is that the more you keep your hands and eyes on the vehicle, the better you can drive it.

To launch this challenge, I went ahead and updated some old sites of mine that really needed it. Ideally I’ll write on those sites for 30 days straight too. They really could use the lift. However, in reality I’m only committing to myself to keep my personal blog updated. This is for personal reasons, such as personal improvement, commitment, and fulfillment. The other sites are guilty pleasures.

This season, I brought friends. Well, at least one that I know of. I’ve also left it open to anyone else who wants to join us. If you have a blog and need a boot-in-the-butt to get blogging. Please join the rest of us! I explain how on the official page:

http://www.thejasonmurphyshow.com/series/my-own-30-day-challenge-part-ii/
This post is part of My Own Thirty Day Challenge, Season 2

So I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a new post every day for a month. Again. I did it last year (count em, there’s 30!) on a whim. There were a few times I almost quit, but I persevered and proved to myself that I can actually accomplish a goal! Some of the content I produced when I forced my hand was awesome. But some of it was craptacular too. Either way, I was able to push full posts consecutively for 30 days straight.

So, I mentioned casually to John Hawkins that I was thinking about firing up the old blog maching again. If nothing else than for the sake of getting more posts on my site and not feeling like such a has-been blogger. He said he liked the idea and he wanted to join me. We also may have winged Jake Ludens into it, who’s blog is in the same state as ours and is badly in need of an updated post (just helpin ya with a nudge there, dude!). I’m thinking of throwing a couple of other projects at it too, at least Shirtwatch and Portagame. Both of those sites are going through transitions and could use the push.

Last year I created a page (here) to track my progress. This year I’ll add another page to the series where I’ll keep the headlines for the posts created by John, Jake, and myself.

And I think I’ll also open it up this year. Anyone else want to join us? I call it “My Own 30 Day Challenge”. No rewards, no MAKE MONEY ONLINE schemes or pitches. It’s all personal. The challenge is drive yourself to create content for 30 days straight, and the reward is knowing you’re able to follow-through, as well as the ability to practice blogging.

So who’s in? Reply in the comments below and I’ll add your blog to the list!

Best of luck!

When I Write

I think a small portion of my ability to consecutively come up with something, even if that something came in varying shades of quality, was the ability to write uninterrupted. At about 11 PM everynight, I’m able to spend an hour at the PC without any disturbance from kids, the wife (she’s watching Big Love or something), phone calls, emails, TXT messages, etc. This allows me to sit down and just write whatever is on my mind. As Michael Stelzner discussed in his tips for finding writing time, this means I have found my “productivity zone”. I only wish that it could happen earlier in the day because by the time I’m done writing, I’m wiped out. In fact, last night I fell asleep several times writing yesterday’s article. At least I know when my zone can occur.

Where Do The Ideas Come From?

As mentioned previously, a lot of my ideas come from trendspotting headlines in popurls and netvibes. It can be easy to see a common topic across multiple sites by using those aggregators.

But even after looking at those sites, I can come away empty handed without a subject matter. At that point, I recap the day with a quick mind map and try to remember if I learned anything that day. If I did I write down on scrap paper what it was , was it profound, did I take action on it, was it worth sharing, etc.

If even after all that, if I can’t think of something to write about, I force myself to write something. Even if it’s just rambling at first, I can always edit the document later. When I force myself to write, I generally can come up with something half way decent.

Other Ideas

If you’re still struggling with ideas on what to write, you could always rely on telling a funny story. Storytelling is a lost art, and if you have the ability you should use it.

Aaron Wall also suggests we use lists. He has a post showing how you can come up with ideas for lists. Something odd about rasing our kids in the demand generation, they just don’t appreciate a good lengthy article. Luckily, lists are an acceptable answer for the ADHD in all of us.

I Showed You Mine…

What ways do you use to come up with content writing ideas?

•  Today is Day 21 out of 30 for My Own Thirty Day Challenge.

Today I was reading through my Netvibes feeds when I came across a simple, yet brilliant post at 45n5 about starting a Money Making Blog. Michael explains that if you’re trying to earn revenue online: “Don’t be lame, you need a blog talking about these adventures.” This makes total sense. Not only do you get journal entries to catalog your journey, you also have a chance to build your personal brand, add an additional stream of income, and most likely help others who are trying to do the same thing!

Although I’m sure that John Chow would probably agree with a lot of what Michael discusses, he’s quick to point out that there is also a wrong way to start a blog every aspiring entreprenuer needs to keep in mind. The lessons learned from the bad example that John points out are to A) be yourself, B) don’t plagiarize other bloggers works, and C) have a solid “about” page.

An “about” page? Is that important? Seems a little self-fulfilling doesn’t it? No way! It has a much higher purpose, as Neil Patel had pointed out previously when he discusses why About Pages are essential. You could point out that you were captain of your high school football team and winner of a hot dog eating contest. But that information would be totally useless to the readers and potential clients. To paraphrase Neil, it’s best if you post helpful information as to what services you provide, what areas you specialize in, and how people can get hold of you. What else? Oh yeah, a photo. (I’m guilty). Your readers want to know what you look like. If you really are camera shy, you could always become simpsonized like these guys.

And finally, if you’re going to start a blog, create a decent About Me page, and work on your personal brand, you’re going to start becoming an authority on a subject whether you like it or not. Ryan Imel offers some authority blogging tips to help put you on the fast track.

Most important rule: always, always be true to yourself. I know, growing up sucks (that link might offend some readers, but Jon F. offers a great example of what makes him unique), but if we were all the same then why would we want to waste 20 hours a day reading other peoples blogs? Keep your voice, it’s the most important asset you have.

Oh, and the “next play” I mentioned when I started this post? It’s pretty simple: after I’m finished with this 30 day blogging challenge, I’m going to start another personal challenge. It’s been pretty successful so far, and the end result is I’m giving myself new behavioral habits to help me achieve my goals. Then, after that challenge, I’ll do another.

•  Today is Day 7 out of 30 for My Own Thirty Day Challenge.

Weekend writing is never consistent for me. Sometimes I come up with plenty of ideas and topics about items I wish to write about across my sites, and sometimes I’m at a complete drought.

During the week I work at a computer station for 8 to 10 hours a day, then come home and usually put a few more hours in during the evening. Some weekends I’m just so happy to be away from a glowing monitor that it doesn’t phase me if I don’t work on my side projects. I seriously need a nice extended vacation.

I have a few ways of conjuring up ideas about what to write about. My favorite method is to browse through a few friends blogs to see what they are talking about. Since my friends typically update their blogs with as much frequency as I do, I’m usually left to the next best alternative: netvibes and popurls.

Popurls is an aggregate that lists feeds from a lot of my favorite sources including del.icio.us, reddit, digg, and newsvine all on the same page. They’re already my browser homepage since their interface is very clean, and they update the feeds frequently.

Netvibes is also a newsreader. Only its more like a news aggregator on steroids! I have well over 100 feeds of my favorite sites in my netvibes account, and I also use it to jot down notes, to do lists, bookmarks, and occasionally play a game. I do have a bloglines and Google Reader account, but both pale in comparison to the robust features of netvibes.

And finally, the last source of content for writing is reflecting on the day’s events and conversations. I am a people watcher and always intrigued and/or entertained by the characters that I get to witness each day. I even work with a few characters who are so unique that a fiction writer wouldn’t be able to come up with some of the traits that they carry. Then there is my family. Never a dull moment. And I mean that quite literally. My wife tends to summon drama and my son is Dennis The Menace reincarnated (he even LOOKs like him, see!). If I truly need a muse, I have a house full of them. Although if I asked my wife how best I might be able to monetize some of our conversations, I’m sure she’d slap me.

• Today is Day 4 out of 30 for My Own Thirty Day Challenge.

The source of the apathetic mood swings? Who knows…
…who cares?

I suspect that the mounting layers of stress I let build up over time take my senses of priority, responsibility, and duty and line them up at the edge of the nearest cliff of moral dilemmas. Then a huge problem like my Ford Explorer losing a fuel injector (damn you Eddie Bauer!) comes and shoves them over.

Seriously, the stress is getting to me bad. I don’t know why I’m struggling so hard with it. Every day it seems like my list of “I need to do’s” and “I have to do’s” and “If I don’t do these immediately I could cause the universe to implode on itself: to do’s” just keep on growing and growing. For every to do I conquer, two more take its place. This sucks. Stress sucks. I suck.

I wouldn’t say that my blogs are causing stress. They’re certainly causing apathy, but not stress. As long as I pay my webhosting bills, my websites are a constant. They’ll always be there whenever I decide to come back to them. I might not have the traffic and readers I used to, but the site and all its history will remain as I left it. I see my blogs sometimes work as a nice surrogate therapist. Why pay $100/hr for someone to listen to me bitch and moan when I can freehand my feelings on my blogs for free. This post is about the worse I’ll get on this blog and is more for those who asked why I don’t updated my blog more often. Don’t worry, I have another blog or two under different aliases where I truly vent my frustrations (probably not a comforting thought, is it?).

But to pull my thoughts together, I decided to take wisdom from a previous post:

I have too much information coming in and too little going out. I started writing this post just because I couldn’t think about what subject to write about. And I didn’t even really care if my site was updated. I just decided to force myself to start writing. Any creative output is a good thing at this point.

So once again, I started writing for one reason: to start writing. By forcing my hand to write something, anything, I’m causing active progress. What the progress is towards is yet to be defined. But it’s better than sitting on my ass staring into my monitor.

To get rolling again, and hopefully to ignite some passion in my writing, I’m planning (but not planning to fail) on forcing myself to write something every single day for, oh I don’t know, let’s say a month. Blog everyday for a month?! Is that possible? I don’t know, but I’ll see. Who wants to take small wagers on whether I actually do it or not? C’mon Jake, John, Omni, Ed, or anyone else want to bet if I’ll do this or not? Put your (serious) wagers in the comments below if so. If not, no biggie. I’m doing this anyway.

• Today is Day 1 out of 30 for My Own Thirty Day Challenge.

November 1st came and I started writing like a powerlifter on a power methball. I cranked out 850 or so words of the most detailed and beautiful character description I had ever witnessed. (It is my book, so I can have an ego about it, nyah.) I thought everything was riding smooth and the flow was happening. But then, I finished the description.

I didn’t have any idea how to develop the character into a story. I decided to throw in the towel and give up on the project. I was done. That 850 words was a much harder stretch than I expected. There was no way I’d ever smith 50,000 words within a month. I turned off the computer and went to bed.

The day and a half I didn’t even want to look at my computer. But deep into the evening I decided to read my manuscript. I took it and split it up and out of nowhere I came up with 4,000 words in less than 24 hours. Not a big feat for most, but a big feat for me.

So, being in the internet age we’re in, and being a sharing person that I am, here’s what I did to conquer my own writers block. Forgive me if this is too much of the basics, but the basics are exactly what I was missing at that point.

Part 1 of 6 – Read to expand.
The first suggestion I’d have if you are stuck in a creative rut is to read your existing manuscript. Look for ways to expand and expound upon your story. This goes well beyond padding sentences with additional adjectives. This simply means to explain in further detail the events that are happening.

If your character is late to an appointment, say why he is late. Explain in detail the moral dilemna he has with the state’s department of transportation and their inability to complete any project they start. Have the character compliment the department of transportation for showing him the detour, an alternate route to his destination, in the first place; for broadening his horizons. But explain that he is frustrated that now that he’s intimitely known that scenic detour for 8 weeks that he’d prefer he started using his original route again. Paint the picture of how a bicycle team decided to train today, on his time, doing fartlet drills through his urban neighborhood. Talk about the old lady, with the walker, and the dog, and the 3 minutes and 34 seconds it took her to finish the crosswalk. Show your characters emotion at not the first, second or third stoplight, but the fourth one as the one that broke his patience. Explain how your character burst through the doors of his office building and ran straight to the deli, because everyone knows he can’t live without coffee. He corned the hallway and jumped to the deli counter ordering the tall latte, only to be redirected the back of the line of six people that he didn’t see. Talk about his emotional defeat as he moped his way over to the elevator pushed the button and hit the sixth floor button, only to have an office administrator stop him on the second floor to deliver mail to the third floor. And hold the door it will only take a second, she needs to drop mail off at the fourth too. Talk about how the character makes his way to his cubicle recalling the events of the previous day when his boss scrubbed the soul from his body in a scathing the whole building heard and that he was never to be late again. Make sure your character ignores every single “Good Morning, Joe” that he hears from always-happy-to-be-happy coworkers. Show him slumping down in his chair trying to hide behind his monitor. Tell about how the IT team tried to perform routine backups on everyones’ computers late last night, but something went wrong and his hard drive froze up need replacing. And he has been setup with an ex-employees machine in the meantime. Then tell how the character finds that the ex-employees email account is still active. He struggles but finally decides to check the account because it is technically company property and he needs to get work done. At the top of the inbox, have your character find the company-wide email from his boss who is apologizing because he is going to be late to the office that morning due to annoying road construction projects (but thank god he has a Blackberry to let everyone know). Then have your character try to decide whether to laugh or to cry.

Summary
I found that everyday occurances are the best things to expand on while writing fiction. We ALL experience them and almost every reader can relate in some way. It makes the emotional connection with the reader. Your character wasn’t just late, he was cataclysmically late. His world really was going to end.

Brainstorm
Enhance, expand, and expound. Here are some other ways to expand your story’s everyday occurances:
-Your character just doesn’t have a hair appointment. She has a hair appointment with the metro gay guy that she’s hopelessly crushed on.
-Your character just doesn’t drive a Nissan Sentra. He/she drives a 1982 sun-faded marroon Nissan sentra. Stick shift (which was almost impossible to learn) that sticks more than shifts and a hatchback to throw friends, groceries, dogs, and football gear in. It has 188 thousand miles on it and just as many stories. In fact your character would like to share one of those memories now.
-Music wasn’t just playing inthe background. It was a horrible muzak cover of Ozzy Osborne’s Falling To Pieces that reminded your character of the time they went to see Black Sabbath play at the Kingdome almost thirty years ago. They were on the third row when it started, and pressed up against the stage when it ended.
-The bills just aren’t overdue. There is a stack of them 3 to four months old sitting unopened in the corner of the makeshift desk. They’ve since changed their phone numbers 3 times, using disposable 7-11 cell phones, just to avoid collection calls. Luckily the rent and utilities keep getting paid somehow but they better get some credit counseling or they’ll be drowning in the court costs.
-Her husband wasn’t just watching football on Sunday. He was a die hard fan watching the Patriots almost lose a pre-season game in overtime yet he was as emotionally involved as if it were the Super Bowl. The coach couldn’t hear him, so why was he yelling so feverishly at the television? Stupid husband.

I hope this somewhat helps kick the creative engines in gear. I have five more posts to my write in this series, and I’ll most likely accomplish at least three of them. Lucky you.

Good luck!

(Late disclaimer: I’m an idea guy. I’m sure the grammar police have a lot of work to do on my posts, and I’m ok with that. Good thing I don’t write for a living).

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