How to keep your poetry blog alive when you don’t feel like writing at all

Oh, this is one of the questions I believe every blogger has encountered from time to time. And it happened to me this spring. It wasn’t a conscious choice, but rather physical condition that stopped from being able to write as much as I wanted do.

Anyway, it was a good opportunity to take break from blogging and contemplate about the future of Business in Rhyme: am I really able at the moment to fulfill goals I set for myself this year. This couple of months being more absent from the blog led me to learn few interesting things, not only about myself, but about writing as well.

In order for your blog to really prosper, you need to be clear what you want to achieve with your blog. Do you blog only for fun and occasionally share your poems? Or your blog is more ‘serious’ place where you publish your work as (a potential) an author and serves for showcasing your writing to publishers and agents?

That’s the first thing that will determine how often and what kind of content for you is recommended to publish.

The second thing is, (in order for your blog to grow) you need a firm, yet simple and applicable content plan to keep your blog on track. And by that I don’t mean loose ‘sketch’ in your head, but rather written in the form of editorial calendar or an excel spread sheet, which one you would place somewhere visible to you, as a reminder. You can get creative with this as much as you want – it’s important it works for you and motivate you to write.

How to create an effective content plan for your poetry blog? Think of your blog like a literary journal editor.

Maybe your blog could have some regular features. Something that you would publish on a constant basis. In moments when you lack ideas for writing, you could share what interesting poem you have read, or what you would like to read. Think of that one or two constant features that could go on weekly or monthly. You can also share a quote or video you find inspiring. Or even write about why you can’t write!

Write your feature ideas in one column and in the other be more specific of what you would like to share. For example you could introduce a feature ‘poem of the week’ and think of poem you lately read that you would like to share with your readers. Along the idea, assign a date you find suitable for publishing and slowly you are already building your editorial calendar and ensuring yourself to publish regularly.

Now, when you created a structure of your blog for next couple of months it’s easier to write in advance, even when your writing juices run dry.

Another thing you can do to motivate yourself to publish frequently is to keep yourself accountable by participating in challenges.

Accountability is like setting an intention in your consciousness that you need (not should) to write, because pure knowing that your readers are expecting to read something from you can ingrain a motivation to write. That’s what happened to me in April during NaPoWriMo. I didn’t feel like writing at all. The work I produced certainly it’s not the best I wrote so far, but just the act of writing and fulfilling the challenge brought me joy.

In the end, I do believe that taking occasional sabbatical from writing and blogging can be beneficial to our creativity as it allows us to recharge and regroup our forces in terms in which direction we want to deliver our writing.

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