Helping a Fellow Blogger

One of the best ways to develop any of your talents is o network and share with others who share your same passion. Once I decided that blogging was going to be a large part of my life, I set out on a journey to soak up any and all information that I could. I now get daily emails from problogger.net. I received a great piece from a young lady by the name of Alisa Bowman

http://www.projecthappilyeverafter.com/

and decided to respond thanking her for sharing and encouraging me. Her article gave me just the boost I needed to keep writing-no matter what it is that you write about. Here is my response posted on problogger.net:


Great article! I was very happy to see an article like this on ProBlogger.net. I have been dealing with the dilemma of trying to find time to devote to my blogs as well.

As you mentioned in your article, real life has a way of preventing you from devoting as much time as possible to your blogs. My goal this month was to work on the design format of my personal blog, then devote time to developing my business blog. When I first started blogging, I felt very overwhelmed every day. I wanted everything to be so perfect, that I forgot to be 'me'. I also wanted to make sure that I was keeping abreast of the research and articles out there because I knew I had a lot to learn. All of the information I found was great, but still overwhelming. There was so much information out there that I ended up being confused instead of enlightened. But I turned my confusion and desperation into something better-a blog post about the perils of a new blogger- http://arewethereyet-thejourneyitself.blogspot.com/2008/12/to-blog-or-not-to-blog.html -

I had to regroup and realize that Rome was NOT built in a day. Writing the blog post about my frustrations made me feel so much better; and really increased my confidence. I filed it away as ' A lesson learned'.

Needless to say, being a wife and a mother-along with this little thing we call 'The Holidays'-has prevented me from accomplishing my goals this month. There is no way to completely stop the rest of the world from spinning, so I guess I will just bite my lip and enjoy the irony of frustration.

My personal frustration is my brain's cruel joke of giving me inspiration in the middle of the night. I have quickly learned the importance of sleeping with a pen and a pad next to my bedside. Over the past week, I have graduated to emailing and making notations on my BlackBerry so I don't lose the thought when it hits me. Last night I did my first "BlackBerry blog". Although my husband thought that I had completely gone off the deep end, I explained to him the pain and perils of Writer's Block, along with the importance of feeding creativity when it strikes. Lying in bed with a toothache did not excuse me from having to write. In fact, this toothache has been a blessing-laying in bed all day will definitely make you think. I blog EVERYWHERE!

I especially like the part of your article where you encouraged us readers to "keep going" even if you hit a stumbling block. I cannot stress how important it is to "write quickly"-even if you have to go back and edit. It has taken me 10 years, and 2 stints of "quitting" writing to learn that the best material comes from the heart and flows freely. Planned scenarios are just not my thing.

I thank you for sharing. It is especially heartwarming to someone like me who is now at a crossroads trying to re-establish herself as a writer. We can all learn a lot from each other. With that said...back to the blogspot!

http://arewethereyet-thejourneyitself.blogspot.com/