Writing tips: How to write a better blog

I've got writing on my mind this week. I'm doing one last read-over of the new, revised and fabulous manuscript for my novel. I've been reading Marian Keyes, who always makes my writing heart quicken a little. And I have the new book by Monica McInerney sitting pristine in a Dymocks bag, awaiting my attention - I love a good story.

But I'm also thinking about blogging. This Thursday I fly to Melbourne for the Problogger Training Event, where I'll be speaking on a panel with the awe-inspiring Valerie Khoo and the amazing Kerri Sackville, all about how to use your blog to create paid writing opportunities. I. Cannot. Wait.

While I'm in this writing/blogging frame of mind, however, I thought I'd take the time to put together some writing tips for bloggers. Not what to write, but how to write it. These are things that I've learnt over the (nearly) three years that I've been here at the Fibro, and I hope they'll be of use to you.

•Get closer. I've written about this before, but intimacy is the key to good blogging. I'm not talking about revealing every detail of your life (though feel free to do this if you so desire). More to strip back your writing 'voice' to its bare basics. The easiest way to do this, I find, is to try stream-of-consciousness blogging. Write it all down exactly as it first appears in your mind. Every word. Don't try to edit it as you go - you can do that later. Don't try to make it sound 'writerly'. What you're looking for is the essence of you. Blog the way you talk. It's that simple.

•Go closer again. The biggest mistake that many bloggers make, from my perspective, is trying to tell the whole story. Nobody needs the whole story. What they need is the one moment that tells the whole story. The angle is important. If you find that your posts are rambling (and, really, short is usually better on a blog), hone in on the best bits. Just tell those.

•Think about your audience. While most bloggers say they blog for themselves, the truth is that there is a contract in place in a blog - you write, someone (hopefully) reads. If that weren't the case, you'd be writing in a diary with a combination lock on the front. With that in mind, you need to allow room for those readers. Leave some space in your posts to allow your readers to find the universal heart of what you're writing and to share their experiences.

•Proofread your work. I know the temptation is strong to simply put the full stop on that last sentence and hit Publish. But try to resist. Check the spelling. Make sure the last sentence has a full stop. Ensure you have no extraneous words (as I often do) where you've changed your mind halfway through a sentence and haven't quite deleted the earlier version. A good blog is a clean blog. It really does matter.

What do you think is the secret to great blog writing? Which blogs do it best as far as you're concerned? 

PS: You'll find more tips on writing a better blog, from the Problogger himself, here.

About that Pinterest thing...

Being the late adopter that I am, I have recently joined Pinterest. I know. Only two years behind the Cool Kids who have now moved on to some other new thing that I've never heard of and will probably laugh derisively about when it's explained to me. Like I did with Pinterest.

I confess I still don't really get Pinterest. I think you can tell that merely by looking at the names of some of my 'boards':

•Things I Love But Will Never Do

•People Who Don't Have Red Hair Don't Know What Trouble Is

•Actually Useful If Not All That Pretty

•Food I Would Like To Make One Day

You see what I'm saying here? I think I'm missing the Pinterest vibe.

Having said that, I found myself in there on Friday night gleefully pinning photos of bathrooms. Mostly because Fam Fibro fell prey to a virulent vomiting virus, which took care of most of last week, and I wanted soothing pictures of bathrooms in which people never puke.

I'm not sure if this is the intended purpose of Pinterest, but yes, it did help, thank you for asking.

If you would like to share my images of bathrooms, or in fact those actually useful things, feel free to come on over and say hi. I'm here. I'll be waiting. Gaily pinning pictures of bunting while I wait.

Are you on Pinterest? Can you explain it to me?

[image: from here via Pinterest, of course]

When goats fly

Always one for the big questions, Mr5 unleashed another tonight... adding another special challenge to my parenting pantheon. We had managed to make it unscathed through 'World's Most Dangerous' animals, where the sole subject tonight seemed to be about male elephants looking for female elephants and how they got very aggressive when 'must' came over them.

He turned to me, questions filling his eyes, and came out with "What's a male, Mum?" Given that I was standing by with hurried explanations about 'mating' and 'must' at the ready, I was thrilled with this one, eagerly explaining that it simply meant you were a boy.

No further questions at that time.

He waited until later to really test my game. When I was distracted by the washing up. After an intense discussion about Christmas lists.

"Can goats really fly, Mum?"

It took me a moment, but I was proud of myself for grasping the gist of this relatively quickly.

"You mean reindeer?"

"Yes," he said. "Those. Goats. The ones that take Santa around."

"Well," I said, thinking on my feet and in the suds. "Reindeer would have to fly to get him all over the world, right?"

Pause.

"I guess. But I can't see how they can really fly. Planes and gliders can fly. Not goats."

"Reindeer," I corrected again, brain churning wildly. Was this going to be the big Santa talk? Already? I was hoping to get one more Christmas in with Mr8 who, being the eldest and the most earnest, still clings to the belief that his parents tell the truth at all times. I hadn't even considered the idea that I'd be dealing with Mr5 first. But then, I shouldn't be surprised. Mr5 is an altogether different cup of tea.

"Well, lots of people believe they can fly," I prevaricated, rattling dishes.

He thought about it a moment. "I can't see it Mum," he said. "People can't fly without planes and gliders, why should goats?"

Why indeed. I forestalled further conversation by hurriedly switching the subject to Power Rangers, but I can see the writing on the wall for Santa and the gang. If not this year, then maybe next.

It's a funny thing, this whole business. I think I get as much out of Santa as the kids do - maybe even more, now that I think about it. There's a magic in it that sums up childhood for me. But there are times when I wonder why we do it - to them and to ourselves. Because at some stage, for all of us, the reindeer become goats and we realise who's really drinking Santa's Christmas beer.

In the meantime, however, Mr5 and I will spend Christmas Eve this year scanning the skies for Santa and his flying goats.

It should be quite a moment.

Does Santa still visit your house?

[Image from here]

10 things I learnt this week

As the end of the week approaches and I prepare to take myself to the Big Smoke for lunch tomorrow, I thought it a good time to reflect on the lessons learnt this week. It's been a busy week in The Old Girl, with lots of decisions to be made - decisions about paint colours, decisions about shoes, decisions about the 13 pages of edits on my novel.

Exhausting.

So here's what I learnt this week:

1. I am terrible at making decisions. When there are too many decisions to be made, I make the decision to go to bed. Unfortunately, this decision cannot be followed by the appropriate action most of the time, so I am left dangling about the place.

2. My children delight me more than I ever expected. They are also a greater source of anxiety than I ever imagined. There's a balance in there somewhere, and sometimes we actually find it. This week the wins were big, and losses niggling and troublesome. But the school holidays are upon us and we're all more than ready for a break.

3.  It is possible to love a pair of red sneakers.

4. The days of the week are named after Norse gods. Thursday, for instance, is Thor's Day. I could also take you through the finer points of the Runic alphabet, but I suspect it takes a great deal of love to weather that particular storm and I will not subject you to it. Suffice to say that Mr8 can write his name in Runic. Which is bound to come in handy one day.

5. Reading the end of a book first is not always a good idea.

6. It is difficult to know exactly when to pull the flannelette sheets off the bed. I nearly peaked last week after one sultry night of 12 degrees Celsius, only to be very happy that I'd been feeling lazy that day when the temp topped out at 3 degrees Celsius the following night. Seriously. Is there a handy guide for this kind of stuff?

7. There are very few rooms that cannot be brightened significantly by the addition of a little bunting.

8. There is a very good chance that I do not need every single one of the 4444 items currently languishing in my email inbox.

9. I tend to overuse the word 'very'. I will take Mark Twain's advice and insert the word 'damn' instead. So point 7 now reads 'There are damn few rooms...' and point 8 reads 'There is a damn good chance...'. I think it makes me sound racier. What do you think?

10. Clearing space in one's head often comes down to clearing space in one's schedule. By saying no to several things this week I was able to stave off the whelm and make some good inroads into my novel edits. I am feeling much relieved. Thank you all for the good advice and support.

I have just one more thing to learn this week, and it's this:

Do you still have flannelette sheets on your bed?

[image: from here]

50 Shades of Beige

The living room walls of The Old Girl look like a patchwork quilt. Crazed squares of grey, white with a hint of green, yellow, grey-green, dark beige, light beige, antique white, half white... Yes, The Builder and I are redecorating. Again.

I'm pretty sure that the last time we went through this, I decided, somewhere between choosing the kitchen benchtop and choosing the laundry wall colour, that we were never doing this again. Ever. And yet, here we are, not 12 months later, doing it all again.

This is our third house together and, somehow, the most difficult. The Old Girl is just so terribly old. She's sorted. She knows her style. She's restored to her former glory and it's pretty glorious in a simple, old-school kind of way. There's only one room that needs our help for now. And the pressure of getting it right is getting to me.

The Fibro needed a complete overhaul. Head to toe, top to bottom. When you're changing everything, you just get in there and go for it. It needed bringing into the 21st century and into the 21st century it came, albeit kicking and screaming.

The Old Girl is more your 19th century kind of girl. Genteel. Hitting the right note between that and 'I don't want to live in a museum' is not easy. I wanted to paint the room white. But the white paint chart was more daunting than the coloured paint charts. Who knew there could be so many? And, yes, we considered Hog Bristle, like every other household in the country. But we can't go there. The Fibro was Hog Bristle (half) on the walls and Hog Bristle (quarter) on the timberwork. We can't press repeat.

We'll get there. Of that I have no doubt. In the meantime, the man at the paint shop and I are becoming very friendly. "Are you sick of the sight of me yet?" I asked the other day, popping in for our 11th sample pot.

"Oh, you're not my best customer yet," he said, popping a splodge of yellow into the Haynes Beige (half) he was mixing up for me.

"I'm not?" I said, somewhat put out by this. I thought we had something special.

"Nope," he said, dolloping in some black. "That spot is reserved for the lady who took 25 sample pots to decide on a colour."

We were both silent a moment, me contemplating the horror, him no doubt dreaming of another customer who'd spend over $100 in sample colours (at least I'm only halfway there...).

"What colour did she end up choosing?" I asked.

He laughed. "The second one she took home."

Tonight I sit here and contemplate my patchwork walls as I write this.

We're pretty sure we've chosen a colour.

The first one we considered, only knocked back to half strength.

There's a lesson in here somewhere.

What colour are your living room walls?

[image: from here]

Sunday drives and new shoes

The Builder and I have decided to resurrect the Sunday drive. Remember when you were a kid and your mum and dad would throw you all in the back of the Mitsubishi Express on a perfectly fine day when you would have been quite happy to hole up in your bedroom and read a book?

You would drive in circles, looking at gardens and wharves and antique shops and all manner of other boring adult things, being told to 'look at the scenery' and 'enjoy the view' when you complained you were getting carsick or your sister/s/brother insisted on playing 'corners' with you when, really, who ever enjoyed that game?

When you finally got home, after hours spent listening to Neil Diamond or, gasp, Phil Collins on the tapedeck, you would all fall out of the car and your parents would swear you'd never do that again because, really, who needed to listen to kids to bicker for hours on end?

Or maybe that was just us.

Anyhoo, today we packed a picnic and drove ourselves down the coast into the endless blue of a beautiful spring sky. We told the boys we would be looking at antiques, but they were mollified by the fact that we also packed their bikes and balls of various shapes and sizes.

When we arrived at our first stop, Mr5 made it clear that for everything 'Mum and Dad' that occurred (eg, looking at antiques), there would need to be a Mr8/Mr5 equivalent. When our first two purchases were a chocolate milk and a second-hand book for each of them, he thought he was on to a winner. Until I pointed out that he now had a glut of 'Mum and Dad' moments to overcome. He dealt with the antiques shopping by standing out the front of the shop, on one leg, rapping about how boring life was when your Mum and Dad looked at antiques. Yo.

When I stopped laughing, I sort of had to agree. I'd have rapped the same thing had rapping been invented when I was five.

Part two of the day was pretty much wall-to-wall Mr8/Mr5 stuff - bikes, balls, beach, icecreams, rockpools, park. Seriously, I need to work harder at the 'Mum and Dad' stuff. Not even a wharf in the mix. Mr5 picked up some little snails from the rockpools for his 'shell collection'. When I pointed out that there were still residents in the shells, he was horrified. "Is that why they were hard to pick up?" he said. "They were holding on."

They were.

We tenderly rehoused them in another little pool, with him fussing over whether they would like their new home. I watched them burrow back into the sand. "I think they're much happier in there than they would have been drying out in your hand," I told him. Perspective.

Later as we walked up the beach, I could feel the sand between my toes. Which would have been lovely and summery, bar the fact that I was wearing shoes at the time. "I think I have holes in the bottom of my Connies," I said to The Builder.

"What a shame," he said. "You'll need to buy new shoes. I bet you're disappointed..."

New sneakers. Now there's a 'Mum' thing. All I have to do now is decide on the colour.

Two questions today: Does your family do Sunday drives? Do you wear Converse sneakers - and if so, which colour?

I'm thrilled to be this week's Decorating Forum featured blogger. If you have any questions about colour (sneakers or otherwise) or any other decorating issues, you should pop in to see Julie-Ann and her lovely community. They really helped me out with my pillow problems.