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By Gary, May 27, 2010

Last night was very restless for me. It seems the older I get, the less I can sleep soundly at nights. (We won’t even get into some of the standard aging and Old Guys reasons comedians seem to find so funny. It’s not.)

What I’ve learned over the years is that a sleepless or restless night can be an opportunity. If done wisely, and not done too often, some of my sleepless nights turn into an opportunity to use the time for writing, for planning my writing, and sometimes just for general musing about where I want my writing career to go.

Of course, medical advice about insomnia probably flies in the face of that suggestion. Certainly health professionals would lean toward doing something that quiets your mind, not something that activates the old creative juices, causing you to become more alert and less likely to sleep.

But certainly, if you are having trouble sleeping, getting up to scribble a few notes or pound around on your keyboard a bit is an alternative you might consider. Of course, if you use a sleep aid or perhaps some kinds of sleeping pills, getting those creative juices to flow might be an insurmountable challenge for you. In which case, I might recommend a small glass of warm milk and crawling back under the sheets.

Otherwise, do yourself and your writing a favor. On those nights when sleep simply will not come, or will not return, pull out the laptop/netbook, sit down at your desk/writing table, and see what happens.

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By Gary, May 25, 2010

After a few weeks or perhaps months of steady writing, especially if your writing involves work that you don’t truly love and have a passion about, you can easily find yourself overextended, even facing a sense of “burnout.”

This is sort of a cautionary tale to serve as balance to my “pep talk” the other day about writing every day. Because daily writing can easily become daily drudgery if you are like me. I tend to be either totally lazy, or I swing to the other extreme and become my own worst taskmaster. (Bipolar? I dunno.)

When I first started writing online by setting up several blogs and affiliate marketing sites, I was really gung-ho. I was determined to find something that would make money for me and absolutely dominate it. The sky was going to be the limit to the number of profitable websites I would set up. I foresaw HUNDREDS of websites in my great and lucrative empire.

Then I discovered that I not only could not think of hundreds of profitable websites — I would be crippled and dead from trying to set them all up and legitimately maintain them.

My plans quickly overwhelmed me and I went through a period of almost a year when I could barely stand to go online, much less write something for a blog or something to do marketing.

Presently, I have around 15-18 websites (no, I haven’t actually counted them recently) and I am working my way down to a total of perhaps 10. Of those 10, I anticipate three of them requiring daily or twice-weekly updating. The other seven will be affiliate marketing sites built around datafeeds and require minimal maintenance.

I found the old build a niche site, then another, then another, etc., approach to online marketing and writing was keeping me chained to a treadmill I simply could not keep trotting on.

Not long ago, in one of my early posts about the terrific methods and resources at The Keyword Academy, I spoke about the importance of writing about your “passion.” Indeed, I’ve made that comment several times. That, I believe, is the essence of writing online and off-line, if you wish to be successful as a writer. Find what you really love to write, and forget about a lot of the rest of it.

I discovered I like to write about history, especially the history of the Old West. And I discovered I’m fascinated by clocks and stuff about what makes them tick. (Yes, pun intended.) So two of my major websites that I intend to get back to updating daily will be one on clocks and one on the history of the Old West.

What’s your passion? Focus on writing about that and avoid overextending your writing/marketing efforts.

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By Gary, May 24, 2010

The single most important tip I have for writers, whether you’re new to writing or you’re a wily veteran, is simply this: Sit down at that keyboard every day and write something. Even if you just write a little bit, do it every day. And if you have time and inclination to write a lot, then hit it hard every day and hooray for you.

For those of you specifically interested in blogging or affiliate marketing or other online writing, I call your attention to an extremely useful writing resource I’ve mentioned a couple of times before on this site: The Keyword Academy. This is the only paid membership I have, and I find the tools, advice, and relationships I’ve formed there to be well worth it. (You can take a look for yourself and get their $1 trial membership for 30 days with no strings attached by clicking on the link at the right-hand top of each page on this website.)

Learn all you can about your chose writing “niche,” whether that’s technical writing, copywriting, fiction, whatever. But while you’re learning, treat your writing professionally and commit to writing every day, even if only a few paragraphs. Just as a carpenter would start his day by picking up the hammer, slipping on his work gloves, and getting down to business — so, too, set yourself down every day at that computer or pick up pen/pencil and paper, and WRITE. Everything else flows from that daily commitment to yourself and to your craft.