MackCollier.com

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Stop Lying to Yourself, Your Problem Isn’t Figuring Out What to Write About…

writing, blogging, publishing…it’s actually writing the damn post.

You don’t need ideas, open Google Reader or join #Blogchat.  You’ll have enough ideas to write posts for the next year.

The problem is, when you actually WRITE the post, then it’s real.  Then you are dangerously close to publishing it.  Which means suddenly everyone will see it, and read it, and judge it.

And yet, you are often the harshest judge of your own work.  Too often, you assume that your post isn’t worthy of the reader, before they have a chance to dismiss it.  So it stays in your Draft folder, mocking you.

You can’t ‘sell’ until you ‘ship’.

Stop assuming that you know better than your reader does.  Write the damn post.  Then if it bombs, you can figure out why, and make the next post better as a result.  Stop writing with a perfect filter.

And if you haven’t figure it out, when I say ‘you’ need to just write the damn post, I mean *I* do 😉

 

About Mack Collier

My name is Mack Collier and I am a digital marketing and content strategist located in Alabama. Since 2006 I've helped companies of all sizes from startups to global brands such as Adobe, Dell and Ingersoll-Rand, create customer-centric programs, content and experiences. A long-time internet geek, I've been online since 1988 and began using social networking sites in 1991 when I joined Prodigy. Today, I help companies understand how new technologies like web3, crypto and artificial intelligence can integrate with existing marketing strategies to lead to exceptional customer experiences.

Comments

  1. Justin Brackett says

    Mack, thanks for telling it just like it is. I’ve used that line before. Now that you’ve taken away from me I’ll have to start writing or just shut the heck up!

    Cheers,

    Justin

  2. Mack Collier says

    Ha! Thanks Justin, I usually write these posts for y’all, but this one was more for me as a reminder to stop trying to be perfect every time and just write the damn post 😉

      • Mack Collier says

        I think we are usually our harshest critics. To the point where we can kill a lot of posts that our readers would like, simply because we want them to have perfection. Which is completely unreasonable.

        Hope others can share with us how they deal with turning their ‘perfect filter’ off.

        • Justin Brackett says

          This seems to sum it up-for me!

          Ring the bells that still can ring
          Forget your perfect offering
          There is a crack in everything
          That’s how the light gets in.
          – leonard cohen

  3. Yvette Pistorio says

    I always start slightly panicking right before I hit “publish” on our blog!! Thanks Mack, this is a great reminder that we don’t have to be perfect 🙂

    • Mack Collier says

      I know, right? We all want to create valuable content, and I think we are often worried that it might not be, or that (gasp!) someone might hate it!

      Of course, that almost never happens, but what’s the fun in being rational? 😉

  4. Gabriele Maidecchi says

    Oh trust me, if I was too harsh on myself I wouldn’t even have a blog. You’re right, most of the times I really lack the will to write at all.
    It’s kinda easier to just dismiss it as a lack of ideas, that’s just laziness on my end :p

    • Mack Collier says

      And yet, how many times have we talked to bloggers that say their best posts are usually the ones they write in 5 mins and don’t think about?

      We know how to write great posts, we just need to get out of our own way and do it!

  7. beth says

    One of the best books I read about getting writing done, or anything else for that matter, is Bird By Bird. Anne Lamott advocates writing what she calls a sh**ty first draft (SFD) as a way to shut off the mental editor. Do you research. Organize your thoughts how ever you do it and then just start writing. Ignore grammar. Ignore spelling. Ignore organization. Ignore everything. Give yourself permission to write utter tripe. (You usually won’t) Just let the pen move (or fingers type) without stopping. Sometimes I write till I’m done. Sometimes I write for a set time. But in either case I don’t edit till I have the SFD completed and typed into the computer.

    Editing is a secondary process not a primary one.

  8. Ricardo Bueno says

    I think I was reading “The Creative Habit” by Twyla Tharp – she said something like “the hard part isn’t writing, the hard part is actually starting.”

    Couldn’t agree more with that statement. It happens for a lot of the reasons you mention. Self-doubt. The inner-critic. That voice inside our heads that makes us frightened about putting our work out there.

    But at the end of the day, you just have to do it. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just know that the more you do it, the better you get. Period.

  9. Kylie Ofiu/Aspiring Millionaire says

    This is so true. I have 101 ideas, but sitting down and writing the post is an entirely different matter. Sometimes for me I get the motivation, but my kids make it impossible to write anything, lol.

    Thanks for being so upfront.

  10. Flavio Martins says

    Can’t say I have either of these problems with my customer service blog. It’s more a matter of finding an audience that actually wants to read the thing.

    Lots of ideas and lots of writing going on, but then readership is stuck at the same rate it has been for months.

    Hopefully that trend changes here this next year, I’m crossing my fingers.

  11. Prof KRG says

    I can’t believe you figured out my system. How annoying! Here I was thinking I was fooling everyone.

    Fun (and strangely true) blog, Mack.