By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Writing.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

What steps will take you from planning to hitting post?

So far, I’ve been talking about long-range planning for your blog.

What your primary topic will be, what will be your voice or personality, how are you going to go about attracting readers to what you have written?

So where do I suggest you go from here?

Spend some time reading blogs.

Read lots of them, on your topic and on others. Look at what other people are writing about and how they’re presenting the material. Make some notes about blogs you especially enjoy. What draws you to those blogs?

At this point, you are immersing yourself in the blogosphere. Some blogs are heavy on illustrations. If you’re an artist, talking about your artwork, you’ll need to feature images or examples. Do you gravitate towards blogs that include video clips? You will need to decide whether you’re going to create those videos or provide links to existing videos. This is an excellent place to pay attention to copyrights, yours and other people’s.

With your blog use images?

If you’re an artist, you want to be sure to include notices that the work is copyrighted. There are lots of tricks you can use. While you can’t copyright an idea, you can copyright the finished product. Some artists show only a portion of their work or pictures of them in their studio creating. Writers often give away snippets of the story or book. If you plan to use video or images, make sure you abide by the creator’s copyright.

There are several sites where you can obtain images available under a Creative Commons License, free for anyone to use or share. What you don’t want to do is just steal images off the Internet. The last thing a new blogger wants is a lawsuit or threat of a lawsuit for copyright infringement. When in doubt read the fine print or contact the person who posted the original and ask them for permission.

You can, of course, create your own photographs or videos. If you decide to do that you have to ask yourself why? If your original plan was writing, detouring into photography and video production can sabotage your writing plans. But then maybe you’ll discover what you really want to do is express yourself visually rather than through words.

Start producing content.

If you plan on your blog lasting more than that first few weeks, it’s a good idea to have some content in reserve. In the middle of your blogging project life happens. You don’t want your blog to go dark, with no new content for periods of time. We haven’t gotten to the mechanics yet, but I will share one thing I learned the hard way.

One year I tried to post every single day. There were many nights I was up late getting that post done, and this was at a time when I had a full-time job as a therapist and a part-time job teaching classes to beginning counseling students. The result was that a lot of posts were published with typos and spelling errors I wish I had caught. I have significantly reduced the errors by writing ahead of time, letting the posts set for a while, and then proofreading it a second time before posting. I’ve also taken the pressure off myself by scheduling posts to appear in the future. It is currently the beginning of August, and I already have at least one post per week scheduled to run on counselorssoapbox.com until the end of the year.

Think about how often and how much you will post.

Learn from my experiences. You’re probably better off to plan on posting once a week then to plan on writing every day and ending up without posts ready. As I write extra posts, I save them for later use or schedule them for future dates. Don’t turn the pleasure of blogging into avoidable pressure.

With all this planning done, your next step will be the mechanics of setting up your blog site.

We will start talking about the mechanical parts in the next post. Think about the mechanics of a blog as similar to starting your own business. If you need a vehicle for business, do you need a nice car to transport clients or a van to carry materials and equipment? Having created some content will help you plan the layout and functionality of your blog.

I hope you are finding some of this helpful and I am looking forward to talking to you again.

You’ll find more posts on this topic under – Writing.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

By David Joel Miller.

Writing.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Don’t make the blog mistakes I did.

If you want your blog to be successful, there are some things you need to do before you publish your very first post. Spend some time planning. If you read a lot of blogs, you may know more than I did when I first started. Not knowing anything I leaped directly into the deep end and spent the first-year learning about the process. I’m not suggesting you fall into planning paralysis. There are some things you will only learn from doing. But as you think of your blog a little advanced planning can save you a lot of headaches later. What do you need to plan? Two things, content, and process.

Planning your blog’s content.

I think more beginning blogs fail due to faulty content plans than anything else. The mechanics you can learn as you go, though watching some tutorials and other blog posts, can save you a lot of time over trial and error experimentation. More about that later.

The first thing you need to think about is what is your blog going to be about?

A blog is not social media.

I’ve seen some bloggers who started out writing about themselves and what they do. So, there’s a post about the hamburger that had for lunch and how they took a walk around the block, and they’re going to the park, with their kids on Saturday. The only person who might read this would be your mother or a jealous ex-boyfriend. Most people won’t care what you’re doing unless you are already a phenomenal celebrity.

Can’t you write a blog about food?

Sure, you can. Don’t write that you ate a hamburger or show me a picture of the ice cream you had. Write a post about the Ethiopian restaurant you went to and how their food was different from what you’re used to eating. Write about the new Pakistani restaurant or the Indonesian one. Write about foods I’ve never experienced and restaurants I didn’t know existed, and I might be interested, particularly if I’m a foodie. Show me ways to eat healthily, save money on food, and that might interest me. In other words, it’s not about you, it’s about providing the reader content they would like to read.

Can’t you write about the places you go to?

Writing about your walk around the block is probably going to be boring unless you live in a very unusual neighborhood. Writing about your travel experiences, your week exploring London, and the week spent in Moscow, that might interest people. I’m not saying a blog about walking around the block is impossible. I’m saying the blog shouldn’t be about your routine of life. Writing about some of your observations, philosophizing about how your neighborhood reflects society today could be interesting. But it’s going to be a challenge.

It is your viewpoint that matters.

Almost everybody has children and parents or know someone who does. You need to ask yourself what makes your relationships different, what have you learned you can share with others. If your family is unusual, a blog about Raising Five Kids with Disabilities and Remaining Sane comes to mind, people may be interested. If you write about your struggles with raising a newborn, new parents might be interested.

If you or someone in your family is or has struggled with a challenge, you can write a blog about what you’re going through, the lessons you learned, and how you managed that issue. An excellent example of this approach is OCDtalk.

Could you write about your garden?

I think after one post, I would get tired of reading about, today I planted seeds, tomorrow I’m going to pull weeds. Tell me about ways to control insects organically, or a new variety of plant that you’re trying, and I might be interested if I was a gardener.

Planning your topic will help you avoid running out of things to write about.

The Internet is littered with dead blogs. They may have started out with massive content. I remember one blog that had huge posts filled with multiple illustrations. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out what the blog was about. After a few posts, the author disappeared. If they had a clearer idea what they were writing about and had written smaller posts over time, they might have developed a following.

The blog planning conclusion?

If you’re going to jump into the blogging ocean, spend some time thinking about where you’re going. Read a lot of blogs. Develop a list of posts you’d like to write. Practice your writing so that when you do lunch your blog, the whole process won’t be overwhelming. I hope what I’ve written here doesn’t deter you. I’m just telling you a little planning in the early stages will make the entire journey a lot more enjoyable and productive.

In addition to a topic for you to write about you’ll need to refine your personality and voice. Let’s look at that in next week’s post.

You’ll find more posts on this topic under – Writing.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

By David Joel Miller.

David Joel Miller Books

There are some reasons to write a blog and some reasons not to write one.

If you look around the Internet these days, you’ll find a lot of articles telling you that you should be writing a blog. I think every new, aspiring writer will be told they need a platform. Now platform does not automatically equal blog. But most of the articles about platforms start off by telling you to just create a website, and they usually followed that up by telling you that your website should include a blog.

There are also a lot of classes and trainings you can take on how to create a blog and how to be successful at blogging. These trainings run the gamut from short and free to some tremendously elaborate and expensive trainings. I have been writing a blog since May 2011. If I had known then, what I know now, I might never have started my blog (counselorssoapbox.com.) On the other hand, you should note I have more than two “mental hands,” so I am frequently in a divided mind. By two hands I mean “on the one hand I think x, and on the other hand, I think Y, unless it is Sunday when I may not be thinking at all.”

Now that I’ve been writing the blog for seven years I’m glad I’ve had the experience. Let me tell you a little bit about how I learned about blogs, got started blogging, and some of the things I have learned as a result.

So, what’s a blog?

In 2005, I was sitting in class waiting for the instructor to start his lecture. I probably should mention that I have gone to college off and on since 1966. I’ve gone, drop out, and returned several times. I’ve also changed majors so many times; I’ve lost count. Along the way, I finished an associate of science degree, a bachelor’s degree, and most recently a master’s degree. From my first day in college until I finally completed that master’s degree only took me 40 years. I say only half in jest that I have taken every class possible and the only way they would let me hang out on campus anymore is if I would teach a class.

So, in 2005 I am trying to finally finish that master’s degree that had eluded me for so long. That and I am trying to learn these new technologies and keep up with some students who are closer in age to my grandchild that to me. Several of the students in the class had mentioned blogs, so I finally asked one of them, “what precisely is a blog?”

The technical answer, so I am told, is that “blog” is a shortened expression for a “web log or weblog.” I suspect most of you youngsters out there know more about this than I do. The closest analogy I can come up with for those of the older persuasion is that a blog is a rough equivalent to what used to be called a newspaper column.

Most newspaper columns were topical. Some covered sports, some might be advice columns, and occasionally there was one that was a general-purpose column. Most blogs today are like that. Many have a specific topic, but the topic of some blogs are the life experiences of the blogger.

Counselorssoapbox.com launched in 2011.

After looking around the Internet a bit, I decided to write a blog. I had been working for a while as a drug and alcohol counselor and my last trip back to school had been for a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy. In California children’s therapy is included as part of the family therapy training. After working both as a counselor in the substance abuse field and as a marriage and family therapist, I’d seen a lot of people recover from some serious mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders. I developed a firm belief that people can recover from almost any life challenge. I won’t try to define recovery here.

One other consideration for my blog was how commonly I saw people who had both a mental illness and a substance use disorder. The official topic for the blog then became one counselor’s opinion about mental health, substance use disorders, co-occurring disorders, and the broader subject of how to have a happy life.

So, do I think you should write a blog?

For some people, the answer is yes. If you have a topic you feel strongly about, something that you are enthusiastic and passionate about, then writing a blog offers you an opportunity to tell people how you feel about your subject, and to share what you know about that topic.

If you’ve read or heard somewhere that to be a successful author, you need to have a platform you probably should pause a minute before starting a blog. Writing a blog takes a lot of work. To create any significant readership, you will put in a lot of hours. If you are blogging only to build your platform, there are several other ways to build your platform that may be easier or more productive.

If you’re writing mainly to express yourself, blogging probably isn’t for you. If the main thing you talk about in your blog is yourself, people will get tired of reading it. If you’re writing from a place of problems you’re likely to either run out of what to say or become so discouraged you give up. Occasionally I see a blogger who writes about their struggles with a specific mental illness but does so in a very informative and entertaining way. They can develop a following.

If the primary thing you’re talking about is you, most people will get tired of listening. If you are going to write about yourself, you should do it for you and not be disappointed if you have little or no readership.

Every year many new blogs start, most never attract enough readers to matter. Don’t write a blog expecting lots of people to follow you. Occasionally that happens, but it’s rare. If you do start a blog, do it because you strongly care about the topic, and be prepared to go on writing those blog posts year after year until eventually, you accumulate enough readers that what you say might make a difference.

I started my blog because I wanted an opportunity to talk about some things that mattered to me. Along the way, I learned a lot of lessons that prepared me to do a much better job of writing full-length books. The challenge has become to balance the time I spend on the blog with the time I need to finish my books in progress.

In the next few posts let’s talk about the mechanics of setting up a blog and creating content for it. After we walk through the lessons I learned from blogging then we will take up the subject of writing, publishing, and marketing a full-length book.

If you have questions about blogging or writing or suggestions for future posts, please contact me either by leaving a comment or by using the contact me form. I will try to get back to you as soon as I can. If it takes me a while to get back to you, it is probably because I’m currently working on actually doing the writing. Just know that as soon as an opportunity occurs, I’ll answer your question.

You’ll find more posts on this topic under – Writing.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel