Back in college, I had a boyfriend who chided me (he was a fellow poet) for the hours I spent writing journal entries. “If you invested your time instead crafting a poem a day or writing to any kind of outline, you’d have written a library of books by now…” he’d lament. (Other well-meant though misguided advice from this ex appears in the post Excerpts from the Life of a Heavy Bleeder, or Candy Creates Obedience ).
That boyfriend could not have known then, nor could I, that in our lifetime the internet would burgeon into a vast honeycomb of bloggers, people from all walks of life connecting, divulging, sharing, and above all, growing personally, professionally, and spiritually as they produced content without gatekeepers deeming how or when they shared.
I started blogging in 2007 and after posting steadily at Feral Mom, Feral Writer , I realized that the act of stepping out of the private realm of the journal-sphere and into the public blogosphere shifted my relationship to myself and my writing, adding a rich layer of synchronicity to my life as I engaged with other bloggers…
…which in turn inspired me to share what I had learned with other women, especially those looking to join the conversation but holding back for any number of reasons (from concern over the public/private line to concern over blogging stamina to fear of rejection). It began with a workshop at A Room of Her Own Foundation’s summer 2011 retreat at Ghost Ranch (now taking applications for their AROHO summer 2013 retreat. (Read the synchronous story of how blogging lead me to AROHO and subsequently to meeting writer Marlene Samuels, who later lead me to teaching my first on-line blogging class).
Over the course of 2013, I will lay bare some of the practical steps one can take to launch or recalibrate an existing blog. Heading into my second year of teaching Transformative Blogging, I’m in the process of drafting up a workbook based on the courses I teach. I will be offering my first newsletter mid February for subscribers to this site.
In the meantime, I will walk you through one of my favorite worksheets on Post Variations (twenty or so different types of posts I will review with you, one at a time) and promise you will have a trail of potential blog posts of your own after scanning the example blogs I’ll link to over the coming months.
Let’s get started.
Blog Post Variation #1: Title Posts
Jumping in, I’m assuming you have a sense of what you want to blog about. Once you have crystallized your blog topic (with some brainstorming on your own or with a blogging partner), one savvy way to begin your blog is to tell your readers (and yourself) why you chose your blog title.
Drawing on my poetry background, I’d say the title of your blog matters as much as the title of a poem. Although, us poets (my husband is nodding his head vigorously here) tend to get a tad bit obscure…so, maybe the poem analogy won’t hold up. But let’s think for a moment about the value of a blog title. It should draw us in, make us want to read more. Maybe give us a clue, but not everything since humans are yearning creatures.
Here’s an example of a title post written by writer and librarian Mary Cash who blogs at Librarian’s Labyrinth. Mary’s blog title, in just two words, both narrows and opens up her topic simultaneously. We know the blog is written by a librarian (narrow focus) and yet we know she will allow her blog to take us through a labyrinth (the image opens up her potential field of material she will cover as we follow her through the circular path towards greater knowledge).
In her opening “Title Post,” Mary starts out easy and friendly with a direct address to her readers: “You’re probably wondering where the name of my blog came from and how it relates to the online library at CCCOnline and what I’d like to do with my work as the librarian to help students learn to navigate the confusing, busy world of information.” Then she dives into the mythology behind her title’s choice; check out the rest of Following Ariadne’s Thread through the Labyrinth, or Where my Blog Title Came From.
Here are two more examples from a couple of bloggers I met at She Writes (a social networking site and press offering supportive services to women writers across the spectrum of developmental stages). For the Open Mic section of her blog, writer Victoria Flynn offers a memory from the cusp of twenty (years old) with images of carp, congoes and poetic phrases like, “skateboard addled dreamers.” Poet Nicelle Davis enhances her explanation of The Bees Knees with a lovely graphic of the labeled parts of a bee. Technically, Nicelle’s post is living under her “About” tab, a great place for a “title post” to live, which she retitles, “the bees knees explained.”
I also cruised the She Writes Blogging Index for titles of blogs that drew me in today and had the “click pull” to inspire me to go see who was writing: Butterfly Confidential, where again the “story” lives under the About tab, and Married with Luggage, written by a husband wife team. Also check out another team, pair, at Lofty Ambitions (I admit I had already been to Lofty Ambitons, having first met writer Anna Leahy when I joined her She Writes group, Submission Mission–where, as you’d expect, writers exchange submission information and encourage one another to meet submission goals) and last but not least, Divorced Divas Guide to Survival.
A final word on blog titles, with a poet’s eye view: remember you are setting up some kind of expectation, just like a poet does when he or she titles a poem and so you probably want to try to deliver on that expectation. But more importantly, the title should make you inspired to keep writing to fill the container it might create. I’d love it if you left me a comment and included your blog title. What was your rationale for your blog title?
