How to write a gripping blog post in 50 minutes?

Write a gripping blog post in 50 minutes

IMPORTANT: I wrote this blog in 50 minutes. 

You are a new blogger.

You love seeing 100 blog posts on your website.

You want to make your website an arsenal of good content.

But, you haven’t written a blog in a week. Oh wait, I think it has been a month. Right?

How do you write a blog post quickly? Here is what you need to write quick, snap and post.

Keep logging ideas that make good blog posts

The biggest impediment a blogger faces is – “What do I blog about? What do I write? I don’t know where to start. How do I come up with good topics?”

You feel like you have run short of topics to write. But, it is not the case if you take little more effort to log ideas.

Your mind is an idea machine. The kind of power it holds is insane, in a good way. Make a note of those crazy ideas and turn them into barrels of blogs.

To start with, make a note of problems YOU are facing as a blogger. When you have found traction in collecting topics, go eavesdrop other bloggers’ problems.

Look at those blogger communities, they are flooded with problems in the form of questions. Go find the answers to those questions and help your fellow mates and more importantly, help yourself. Write more.

How to choose from my list of topics?

I am writing this post because I needed to start writing. I needed to kill those innumerable distractions from Facebook Groups and Linkedin Feed. (Let’s talk about the lame videos everybody is making on LinkedIn in my next post.)

Or, if you are anything like me, the other biggest impediment is a situation like this – “Oh, I have too many topics! Where do I start? Which one do I choose? No, I will save this one to publish later. Oh, this is the best topic, but I will save it for some special occasion.”

Do you ever have this kind of a monologue going on?

Choose the one that you feel is your closest current need. Choose the topic where you think you have more ideas about. Is it not easier to start this way?

Identify the core reason for the problem

You have chosen a topic.

You type out the headline and then what?

The problem I am talking about here is about getting a blog written quickly. I solve the problem by showing you how I solved it for myself.

Do not sit lingering about giving your post a sassy introduction already. Just start typing. I used the word typing, not writing. The first line of this post is the last thing I wrote. Makes sense right?

Start with the problem, talk about the first step and gather momentum from there. “One step at a time”, these five words are not random and overused. Think about it and try and stick to smaller goals in a day to achieve big. The catch is, sticking to the smaller goals. So, solve the core problem in smaller steps. Make use of headings to do this.

Write in a pollution-free zone

You can have your kid running around while you are writing. I wouldn’t call that a distraction. You can have 37 more tabs open. I won’t call it a distraction although you can consider shutting them down.

But writing in a place polluted with features, icons, widgets, plugins and unwanted BS all around your writing space is the biggest distraction. Technology can be a hindrance in situations like these. 

I used to write directly on WordPress and I can’t tell you what kind of a fool I was to do that. It killed my productivity and buried it in Antarctica.

Choose a writing space that has minimal features. MS Word is good, but it has portability issues.

To write this piece quick in no more than 50 minutes, I made use  of a clean writing environment. It is called Airstory.

I am not an affiliate to Airstory. I am endorsing it because it has helped me boost my productivity. Airstory turns me into a word monster. Try it here and let me know how it goes.

Shut all other windows

I have a problem. I love beautifying things and I suffer from the pathetic perfection syndrome. It is probably because I deal with obsession every single second. Obsessed with bringing the best. But I have to throw this truth here.

Looking for perfection is like living in a limbo. You don’t know whether the totem is spinning for real or not.

Being obsessed is a good thing.

You cannot be an entrepreneur if you are not obsessed with your work. 

You have to love and bathe in your work if you are an entrepreneur.

But, an obsession of the other kind – to perfectize the bigger picture is what will drag you down and pin you there. That is exactly what happened to me.

I was obsessed with the bigger picture. I was afraid of breaking rules. I was afraid to invent words (like perfectize ). I was too afraid to compromise the green color a plugin gave me to indicate my SEO score. There were too many factors judging my writing even before it got published; even when nobody was watching it.

I broke free from all of it and wrote in a clean white dynamic space. See for yourself. I did it.

Write now. Edit Later

It took me years to do this.

Again, the perfection syndrome is the culprit. I cannot get past grammatical errors and spelling mistakes in general.

I have caught errors in writings of few of the top writers in the world (no exaggeration). I mailed them the errors and have heard back about the correction and a compliment – “Good catch!”. I have such an eye for detail. 

This ability of mine was countering my own productivity. Now I knew why they were the best writers in the world and why I am just a fly catching their errors. You get it, right? Just edit later if you want to get somewhere one day.

Time your writing

You don’t need fancy chess timers on your table or an extra downloadable software or an online tool that sucks up your time asking you to create an account to save time (Oxymoron alert for the less sarcastic).

All you need is a simple timer by Google. Just Google “timer”, enter the time, hit start and you have a watch telling you to focus.

I aimed to complete an 800+ word article in 40 minutes. I arrived at a 1000+ word blog in 50 minutes. Not too bad eh?

Conclusion

Now, this blog did not require as much research because I spoke about how I solved my own problem. I had the requirement, I had the data, I ruled the style and tone. So, I could write it super fast.

But for articles that are backed by stats, research is what takes time. With that too, the above tips can boost your writing speed.

If you want to be productive and create an arsenal of blog posts, you have to write quick and write dirty, first. How can you make that possible?

Start by logging ideas.

Do not waste time finding good topics.

Use a timer.

Will you start logging ideas from today? That is the first step.

So what will you blog about now?

Comment your topic here and go start writing. Why did I ask you to comment? If you leave a comment here, you will be obliged to write about the topic and that is a good obligation that solves your blogging woes. Right? Now, go write.

P.S: I will be true to you. The editing took me another 15 minutes.