When I first started writing essays in preparation for starting my blog, I used one-word titles. I liked the idea of boiling the blog post down to a key word. After about 10 essays, I realized that one-word titles might be too restrictive, so I ditched that idea. I do sometimes use one-word titles, but more often I use multiple words.
Another early choice I made is to end each post with a question. I hope that my writing will resonate with some people and cause them to reflect on their own life and the choices they make. Ending with a question seems like a good idea to prompt that reflection. At times, it can be challenging to formulate the right question, but it still seems like a good way to make sure what I wrote could be useful to someone.
Once I started publishing, I realized I wanted a photo for each post. Even if the blog post does not speak to you, maybe the photo will give you some joy. This has been one of the biggest challenges and has inspired me to take a lot more photos.
Potentially the most significant choice I made was to publish every day. It is a bit daunting to think that I need to write 7 posts every week, 30 per month, over 360 per year… On the other hand, what better way to develop a writing practice than to do it daily. A few months in, one of the things that keeps me writing is my commitment to publish every day. I will soon publish my 100th post, which is amazing considering it feels like I just started this project.
Constraints can spark your creativity, but they can also prevent you from doing your best work. The key is knowing whether they serve you. If not, be willing to let them go.
What are the constraints you use to inspire you? Do you have any that you need to let go?
The constraints I am currently playing around with are: meditation every day. Using the daily Headspace meditation and I’ve started to revisit the meditation basics again so each a 5minute warm up and then the 10 minute basic lesson.
I am figuring out at the moment which other daily activities would serve me.
– studying AMN
– marketing
– doing a session for myself