How to get started writing a travel blog
Starting your own travel blog can be a bit daunting. Thinking about Twitter handles, story ideas, and finding the time makes it a challenge to begin. Here's what I have found out so far:
1) Share your idea with someone: I started by sharing my (seemingly crazy) idea with my husband Jeff. He immediately gave some helpful hints and was positive, which got me over the hump a bit. It doesn't hurt that he is tech savvy, so I know I'll depend on him to get things going.
2) Sketch it out: The idea originally came to me on a bike ride home from a looong day at the office. By the end of the ride, I was coming up with pithy categories, so I sat down and did a mock sketch with pencil and paper:
It looked like a third grader had done it, but I could see what I was thinking of in between the lines.
3) Outline stories: Watching my son's baseball game, I took time during lulls in the action to jot down ideas as they occurred to me. (Okay, I might have missed a couple of plays - bad mom!) I counted them, and they totaled 50. That was when I knew I had more to say than I realized.
4) Tell a friend: I mentioned it to my sister and a cousin, and they didn't laugh at me, Then, a friend from graduate school who is a blogger (see everythingandaracehorse.com) was enthusiastic, gave me some helpful tips and offered to be an early reader and provide critiques.
5) Helpful tip: Schedule a regular time to write. That seemed especially challenging, with dinner, exercise, pets and time with family all vying for my time. However....there is a lot of TV that I enjoy in the evening, so I'm planning on switching out a half hour of viewing for writing about 4 days a week. I'm working on developing it as a pleasant, not onerous, habit.
There are tons of websites that provide great technical information, and I've been muddling my way through getting some of the systems set up. But tonight, I decided to write a paragraph. And, we're on our way!
Update: I've been working on the blog for the past 4 months. I can now say that my writing routine has settled at 1 session per week - Wednesday nights when I take John to the library. The environment is perfect for writing, and it's been a nice experience. I currently have 15 posts lined up, so I'm feeling okay about launching now.
It's becoming pretty obvious to me that I don't take enough pictures, so I'll have to work on that more.
The part about Jeff helping was spot on - tonight when I wanted to go live, I sat down to link my Blogger domain to the one I chose at NameCheap, and was completely stymied by all the codes and getting the sites to talk to one another. That said, if it had been up to me I would have started out with a blogspot domain and that would have been fine. My opinion is you just have to start somewhere. But it's still scary! Getting ready to proof one more time then publish.
If you write a blog, what is the most important thing that you learned that you can share with me and others?
1) Share your idea with someone: I started by sharing my (seemingly crazy) idea with my husband Jeff. He immediately gave some helpful hints and was positive, which got me over the hump a bit. It doesn't hurt that he is tech savvy, so I know I'll depend on him to get things going.
2) Sketch it out: The idea originally came to me on a bike ride home from a looong day at the office. By the end of the ride, I was coming up with pithy categories, so I sat down and did a mock sketch with pencil and paper:
It looked like a third grader had done it, but I could see what I was thinking of in between the lines.
3) Outline stories: Watching my son's baseball game, I took time during lulls in the action to jot down ideas as they occurred to me. (Okay, I might have missed a couple of plays - bad mom!) I counted them, and they totaled 50. That was when I knew I had more to say than I realized.
4) Tell a friend: I mentioned it to my sister and a cousin, and they didn't laugh at me, Then, a friend from graduate school who is a blogger (see everythingandaracehorse.com) was enthusiastic, gave me some helpful tips and offered to be an early reader and provide critiques.
5) Helpful tip: Schedule a regular time to write. That seemed especially challenging, with dinner, exercise, pets and time with family all vying for my time. However....there is a lot of TV that I enjoy in the evening, so I'm planning on switching out a half hour of viewing for writing about 4 days a week. I'm working on developing it as a pleasant, not onerous, habit.
There are tons of websites that provide great technical information, and I've been muddling my way through getting some of the systems set up. But tonight, I decided to write a paragraph. And, we're on our way!
Update: I've been working on the blog for the past 4 months. I can now say that my writing routine has settled at 1 session per week - Wednesday nights when I take John to the library. The environment is perfect for writing, and it's been a nice experience. I currently have 15 posts lined up, so I'm feeling okay about launching now.
It's becoming pretty obvious to me that I don't take enough pictures, so I'll have to work on that more.
The part about Jeff helping was spot on - tonight when I wanted to go live, I sat down to link my Blogger domain to the one I chose at NameCheap, and was completely stymied by all the codes and getting the sites to talk to one another. That said, if it had been up to me I would have started out with a blogspot domain and that would have been fine. My opinion is you just have to start somewhere. But it's still scary! Getting ready to proof one more time then publish.
If you write a blog, what is the most important thing that you learned that you can share with me and others?
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