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Each year, I challenge the readers of See Jane Write who blog to publish a new blog post every day in the month of November. I call this challenge #BlogLikeCrazy and, trust me, the process certainly lives up to its name. But I’m so glad that every year several ladies (and gentlemen) join the fun.
Today I salute the #BlogLikeCrazy All-Stars for 2018 — the bloggers who succeeded in giving their readers new content every day in November.
After being burned out with blogging I’ve restored my passion for it with the #bloglikecrazy challenge. This month as I’ve worked to publish 30 posts in 30 days I’ve focused not on the business side of blogging but on simply having fun.
But let’s face facts: See Jane Write is a business and I can’t ignore that. So I’m going to have occasionally write strategic blog posts meant to build my business. I’m faced with a question I’ve wrestled with for years: How can we writers be both artists and entrepreneurs?
I think I’ve found the answer.
Before we begin let me admit that I totally stole this idea from my BFF and See Jane Write Collective member Jacqui Jones. This month for #bloglikecrazy she started a weekly feature on her blog called the Friday Five for which she shares five random tidbits about things going on in her life right now. What a fun idea! So I stole it for today’s blog post because the words for the post I’d originally planned for today just won’t come out. So here we go…
It’s working. It’s really working!
Last month I confessed that I, the woman who’s always trying to get other women to blog, was fed up with blogging. When I first started blogging over a decade ago it was simply for the love of the written word. Then blogging became a business and each post had to be strategic or it was considered a waste of time. At first, I loved the business side of blogging. Then I started to loathe it.
In fact, I even thought about not hosting the #bloglikecrazy challenge this year. But then I had an idea. I decided that I would try to use the challenge to rekindle my love for blogging. And I would do so by taking these 30 days to not worry about writing strategic blog posts but to instead write posts that — whether fun or heartfelt — were authentic, transparent and true.
And it’s working!
Birmingham-based writer Marie Sutton once shared at a See Jane Write workshop that she was able to complete her first book thanks to late-night writing sessions. Marie is a wife and a mom and has a demanding day job, so writing as night was her only option. Marie says she would “get in the zone” around 9 p.m. each night. She’d sit at her dining room table and write while snacking on Skittles and sipping on Red Bull. She even had a comfortable outfit she’d wear that she called her writing uniform. And she’d also listen to music — Kanye West to be exact (old-school Kanye, of course, not the new, ridiculous “Make America Great Again” Kanye).
Thinking back on Marie’s story I decided I needed some music to help me power through my month of publishing a new blog post every day. I decided I needed a #BlogLikeCrazy playlist!