I think writers are a special breed of people. I can’t even count how many people I’ve talked with through the years about blogging. They’ve expressed some sort of interest in it, but almost always ended the conversation with, “Yeah, but I don’t have anything to write about.” To me, as a writer, I’d be thinking, “I may not have anything to write about, but yet, I’d be writing about that.” That’s what writers do. They create their writing. They create their stories. They create ideas from thin air. And that’s what blogging is about. Writing and creating.
If you blog for any legitimate length of time, you can consider yourself a writer. Unless, of course, you run a photo blog and in it, you exclusively post photographs that are sometimes accompanied by short captions. But if you write at length as I do on this website, you certainly are a writer. Look at newspapers and magazines. Many blog posts on the internet today are more well written and are in longer form than are the columns in those mediums. Just because some bloggers might not share the same level of fame as those who write for the big names, that doesn’t mean they’re any less of writers.
No matter your motive for launching a blog and creating posts, you’ll need to admit to yourself that you’ll need to write. You’ll also need to be good at writing and you’ll need to have an ability to convey your message well. Your messages will need to be articulate and your posts well researched. In short, you’ll need to be the best at what you do. Sounds simple enough – the only problem is, that can be as scary as all get-out.
As I mentioned above, I’ve had conversations with people who have shown an interest in blogging. They’ve told me that they feel as though they have nothing to write about, but what I think is really going on has more to do with a fear of failure. Or, at the very least, a fear of embarrassing themselves which can stem from a lack of confidence. I honestly wish they’d work through their fears because blogging can be a lot of fun. And what I would love to convey to these people is that many of us share the same types of fears. We’ve just figured out ways to work around them.
Let’s take a look at some fears that would-be writers might face if they began writing today. Fears that can stem from a lack of confidence:
- What if I make a mistake? What if the entire world reads that mistake?
- What if I’m so uninteresting that no one ever wants to read what I write?
- What if people make fun of me and tell me that my writing is no good?
- What if my writing really isn’t any good?
I really don’t like seeing people conjure up irrational fears. And yes, I call them irrational because anyone can learn to write and write well. In this day and age, there are so few barriers to getting better at something that excuses don’t resonate well with me. I’m writing this post to explore the topic of fear of writing and to help you work through it.
Why Do Some Bloggers Lack Confidence?
I’ve known people who have called themselves writers. They’ve written very little and what they have written was abysmal. I’m not sure why they gave themselves the title of writer because it seems they weren’t too committed to the craft. I’ve also met folks who have written a great deal and of high quality, but have yet to refer to themselves as writers. The whole notion can be odd at times – those who don’t deserve it, call themselves what they wish to be called. Those who do deserve it, don’t. Strange.
I sometimes wonder why people lack the confidence they so deserve, so in this section I’ll explore what might be happening. I’ll look into the ideas that may be floating around the minds of these specific people. I wonder if it’s a general type of personality that belongs to them or if they’ve been affected by a specific event(s), such as:
- Have past failures instilled doubt into these potential writers’ minds? Have they tried to write, failed, and then told they’re no good?
- Have they witnessed the sometimes brutal public feedback offered to other bloggers? Has that feedback demoralized them?
- Have friends and family withheld support when needed most? Have these potential bloggers given up before they even began?
I can tell you of some first-hand experiences, which will likely instill into you some hope. I barely graduated high school. In 10th grade, I was encouraged to attend a trade school because I was failing all of my regular classes. I attended the trade school and within a year and a half, dropped out. As it pertained to writing, I had a very shallow functioning vocabulary and an even worse knowledge of proper grammar. As a matter of fact, I could barely spell grammar. It wasn’t until I began to mature in my early 20s that I came to appreciate what my mind was capable of. Before that, I thought I’d amount to nothing. Today, I’m confident that nothing can stop me.
We can all write if we put our minds to it and if we can write, we can blog. And once we find the confidence to begin writing and to continually learn to become better and better at it, our blogs will improve at the same rate.
I recently wrote a post on my personal blog about how to become more articulate. Read through that post. I’m proud of it. If I can learn to think of an idea out of the blue, research the topic, and articulate my ideas so they’re coherent and expressive, anyone can do it. Trust me on this. We all feel self-doubt at times in our lives. The trick is to beat that doubt by succeeding.
What To Avoid If You Lack Confidence in Writing
There’s a lot of money out there to be made from people who lack the confidence to do certain things. There are also many highly competitive people who believe the notion that their success relies on the failures of others. What I’m trying to say is that predators exist who would love nothing more than to offer you a temporary fix for your confidence issues. Avoid these types of alleged solutions. While I’ll cover some real solutions down below, I’d like you to also avoid engaging in anything like what I’m about to mention in the remainder of this section.
Don’t Quit & Think You’ll Pick it Up Again Later
Activity and experience with something breeds confidence. Quitting and thinking you’ll come back to it after you feel better about yourself doesn’t. I see new students leave the sport of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu all the time. They never come back. Don’t think time is the cure. It’s actually the enemy. You need to start today. Right now.
Don’t Think You Need to Take Lots of Online Courses
I can’t tell you how many people I know who are, what I like to refer to as, professional students. I know people who have made careers out of learning. They never actually get to the place where they do something, but boy do they know a lot about how to do it.
You don’t need to pay for endless classes and courses to get better at writing. What you need to do is read a lot and then write a lot. And you can pretty much do that for free.
Back when I was a teenager, I played a lot of tennis. I was horrible at serving, so I’d sit and watch the pros at my club serve and serve and serve again. And then I’d go down to the courts to practice my own serving. When it comes to writing, watch the professionals. To do this, all you need to do is read. You can read posts like this one or you can read books. Read things from those people whom you wish to emulate. After that, do. Start your blog and write some posts. You’ll never be completely happy with them, which is why you’ll need to read more and then write more. Consider it a life-long journey of getting better and better at something.
Avoid AI (Artificial Intelligence) at All Costs
AI is for losers. Real bloggers don’t need computers to write for them. Ask yourself what kind of person you’d like to be and then be that kind of person. Period. Write your own stuff and be the writer AI wishes it could be.
How to Become Confident With Your Writing & Blogging
This next section is the real meat of this post. I gave you a lot of advice up above about what things are and what to avoid, but what I’m about to share with you below are actionable tactics that can help you today and for the remainder of your blogging career. It’s my hope that by following the guide I present to you below, you’ll learn how to blog effectively and how that blogging will instill inside you the confidence you need to become great.
By the way, the steps I outline below will seem cumbersome and slow at first, but after you’ve been blogging for a while, you won’t even need to follow anything I’ve written in this post. I began writing what you see on this page a few hours ago and am almost ready to publish it now. The whole thing becomes second nature after a while. But for today, since you’re in the learning how to be confident with your writing stage, it’s good advice to follow the steps I’ve laid out here.
Step #1 – Set a Blogging Schedule
Once you begin blogging, you’ll quickly find that it becomes a way of life. Don’t worry too much about how much time you spend writing because it’ll be a lot. What’s most important is that you harness all of your creativity into a schedule. Writing is an interesting thing; it’s labor, yet a very creative one. It depends on certain motivations and, dare I say, whims. As whimsical as it can be though, it does need to be structured and that’s where a certain level of habitualness comes into play.
To become a writer – a good writer of writing you’re confident in sharing with others, you’ll need lots of practice. You’ll need to write a lot. In order to do that, you’ll need to:
- Break all barriers of resistance.
- Become used to the idea of daily writing and blogging.
- Build a sense of momentum with your writing.
In order to do any of these things, you’ll need to set a schedule for your writing and then get to it.
Step #2 – Be Inspired by an Idea to Write About
I can’t sugarcoat this and try to teach you tricks that will help you get excited about blogging. Confidence in writing will come from inside of you and after a certain point, you’ll find that either you have it or you don’t. There is a simple truth about great writing though and it’s this: when you’re inspired to share an idea, you’ll want to share it with the most people as possible. And you’ll have all the confidence in the world when you do. The thing is, you’ll need to first find your niche. Please click through this link to learn how to find your perfect blogging niche.
Also, just as a side note, please understand that none of us are reinventing the wheel with our blogging. When thinking of post ideas to write about, find other blogs in your niche to see what those bloggers have already written about. Those other posts will surely ignite something in your mind to help you generate excellent writing well into the future.
Step #3 – Gather the Pieces of Your Post
When doing anything in this world that’s repetitive (or even not repetitive at times), a certain level of procrastination creeps in. In order to combat this procrastination, you’ll need to break the overall job down into smaller tasks. Breaking down a task can help you get started.
Similarly, thinking that you can simply write a big long post that will be wonderful in every way in one sitting is an illusion. Wonderful posts take time and preparation, unless, of course, you’ve got years of experience and can do these things. For we mere mortals, breaking a post down into sections, or stages, can help put things into perspective. What are these stages? They’re sort of like the sub-sections of this section in this very post I’m writing right now.
- Formulate the idea for your post by aligning what you intend to write about with your interests.
- Create an outline for the post (I’ll get into this next).
- Write the actual post within the confines of the outline.
- Edit the post, take a break, and then edit it again.
- Release your post to the world with the utmost confidence that it’s an excellent piece of work.
Again, as the days, weeks, months, and years pass, the entire process I outlined above will become a blur. When that happens, you’ll know you’ve made it.
Step #4 – Create Headings (an Outline)
I learned this trick way back in college and I still employ it today, albeit with a few tweaks. You can actually see it in action on this very page.
Basically, after I gather my ideas for a post, I open WordPress and click the Add New Post button. I add a title and then create an outline of my ideas via headings. I usually start off with H3 headings and then get smaller from there. I find H2 headings too large for the theme I’m using. By breaking the post down into outline form, I’m taking stress off my mind by not having to remember everything. Once I type out a section heading, I can sort of forget about that section for a time.
Outlining a post removes much of the pressure that comes along with writing a post. It also helps you avoid procrastination, as I mentioned above. If you say to yourself, “Boy, I’m not really in the mood to write, but I can quickly sit and jot down a title and some headings,” you’ll be ahead of the game. Just by sitting down to start work, you’ve beaten the procrastination. And you’ve also organized your thoughts to boot.
Step #5 – Begin Writing Your Draft
Believe it or not, once you’ve thought of an idea, have created your title, and have written out your headings for each post, you’ve actually done much of the hard work involved with such an endeavor. And then, once your introduction paragraph(s) is written, you’re really in great shape.
The goal here is to produce a piece of work of such high quality that you’re confident to release into the blogosphere. By first reading to learn and then writing to get better at writing, you’ll be in excellent shape to begin blogging. And when you begin blogging by organizing your thoughts and breaking each blog post down into manageable chunks, you’ll remove those barriers that have a strange way of fomenting certain anxieties.
When dealing with the skeleton of your post, you can begin by either writing your introduction section first and then your headings, or vice-versa. Personally, I write the intro paragraph first. That usually gets my juices flowing and I have no problem coming up with headings. It’s up to you though. Whatever works best.
You’ll find that after the skeleton is produced, writing your draft becomes exponentially easier. Here’s a tip: while writing, keep rereading your headings. This will hopefully keep you on track with your writing. I have a tendency to wander onto other topics while I write, so having these guardrails in place is a big help. They keep me focused.
Step #6 – Correct & Edit What You’ve Written
When drafting a post, it’s best to simply get your ideas out of your brain and into WordPress or whichever CMS you’ve decided to use. After the ideas are out (and you’ve taken a break for a few hours from writing) you can dive into the process of editing. There are two things you’ll want to look for during the editing process; rewrites and edits.
Rewrites
Rewrites are the large corrections you’ll need to make to your post. Remember, during the draft stage, you merely transferred what was in your mind to the screen. The first step of the editing process is to make those thoughts and ideas make sense. Think about rewriting entire paragraphs, deleting sentences or paragraphs, or rearranging things a bit with the goal of making the entire post flow.
Edits
Once you’ve edited the larger aspects of your post, you’ll need to polish it up. Basically, before this step, you’d earn yourself a “C” in a college writing course. This final step will earn you an “A.” Look for spelling and grammatical errors and be sure to run the entire post through a grammar checker. One of my favorites is LanguageTool.org. You’d be surprised at how many errors a tool like this will reveal, even after you’ve gone through your own work with a fine-tooth comb. For some strange reason, after you’ve written something and then have read through it, you become somewhat blind to errors. That’s why it’s best to have someone else proofread or if no one is available, use a tool like the one I mentioned above.
I do want to make a quick note about this final editing process. Please read through your post and make an attempt at enhancing your vocabulary. Instead of using the word show, use the word reveal. Instead of using the phrase make better, use the word enhance. Take things up a notch. Some words are basic and common. We’re not basic, common people. We’re educated bloggers who know more than most others. Let’s let that be known.
Step #7 – Overcome the Fear of Pressing the “Publish” Button
I’m almost at the end of this post. How do I feel about pressing the Publish button? I’m a bit hesitant. Will I do a good job with my editing? Did the post make sense? Did I accomplish what I set out to accomplish? Will anyone appreciate what I’ve written? How will my post be received? These are all valid questions and these are the things that make bloggers like us a bit hesitant.
What we need to keep in mind is that, first, yes, we did do a good job. It’s we who are putting in the work, not everyone else. Also, we’re the ones who did the research, not everyone else. We should feel proud of ourselves. Also, we need to remember that nothing is permanent. We can always go back and make edits and improvements, even years later. We can add to our posts and change information that’s outdated. It’s really no big deal. I sometimes even publish my posts before they’re finished, just to get that big reveal out of my mind. I’ll publish at noon and keep writing until 2pm. It’s not something to fret over.
One final thought; as beginner bloggers, there won’t be many people reading our posts anyway. How bad can the experience of releasing it into the wild be?
Step #8 – Share Your Post & Ask for Feedback
Believe it or not, friends and followers are more graceful than we give them credit for. People understand that we’re making an effort to do something, so really, they’ll help when asked. The trick is to be humble about what you’re doing. Don’t act like you’re better than everyone else.
Good – “Hey, I’m trying to grow my blog and I’d appreciate any feedback anyone has on my latest post. I’d really appreciate it.”
Bad – “I’m the best new blogger out there. You really need to check out what I just wrote.”
In general, people like helping others, so use that to your advantage.
When your post is finished, publish it and then share it on Facebook, Instagram, and any writing/blogging groups you know of. Ask others to share it as well and to offer feedback/criticism. Don’t take anything personally. Professional writers get criticized all the time. Use any and all feedback as a learning experience. Be humble, stay motivated, and keep writing.
When asking for feedback, be sure to be specific. Ask certain pointed questions, such as:
- Is there any part of the post where you felt lost? Did it look like I lost my train of thought?
- How was the structure? Did it seem like my ideas were presented coherently?
- Did I make any glaring errors in regards to spelling and grammar?
- What did I miss overall?
You’ll feel nervous releasing your first post to the public. You’ll lack confidence in its reception. The more you write, the more you’ll learn. With experience, you’ll also develop a gauge for what’s desired by your audience and how, in general, your feedback will present itself. Before you know it, you won’t even be thinking about the lack of confidence you once had; you’ll simply be writing too much to care.
Confidence in something doesn’t create itself. It stems from doing, experiencing, and winning. The more you do something, the more you’ll likely fail at it. The more likely you’ll eventually succeed as well and that’s what you ultimately want – success. It won’t come easily, but if everything in life came easy, everyone would be doing it. Get started blogging today and never look back.
If you have any further suggestions on how to become a confident blogger, please let me know below. Also, if you have any questions about what I shared above, please ask down below as well. Thanks for reading!
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