9 Obstacles To Writing a Blog and How To Overcome Them

1. Writer’s Block Step Away. Sometimes all you need is a break. Go for a walk, do the dishes, or craft for a bit. You’re looking for a physical activity that requires little mental concentration. This will give your mind a break and let it wander. Don’t be surprised if in the middle of vacuuming your living room an idea hits you. Just like anything else our minds need a reset button sometimes. Get Stimulated. Talk to a friend, scan your favorite social media, or read a book. Many of our ideas for writing come from our everyday live whether we consciously or unconsciously choose them. When you’re at a loss for what to write, interacting with fresh sources of information can help introduce new ideas to the creative parts of your brain. Scene Change. While it’s important to have a designated space for your writing, during about of writer’s block that space can start to feel like a jail cell. Give yourself a mental refresher by moving somewhere new. Instead of your office try the kitchen or playroom. If you have the ability, try a coffee shop, public library, or park bench. Many public spaces even those outside have WiFi connections: take advantage of them! 2. Time Write Every Day. This is a pretty standard rule for writers, but one that can feel overwhelming. Like any other craft, the more you do it, the better you become. However, sometimes this advice seems to imply that we need to produce mass amounts of work (500, 1,000, 2,500 words: hello NaNoWriMo!), but in reality all that you’re asking for is to write something each day even if it’s only one sentence. The point is to make writing a habit rather than a special activity. Multitasking. We think we can simultaneously write and check our email, Facebook, and online banking pages. Many of us sit down, intending to write, and end up multitasking our time away. Paid computer apps like Freedom, which stop you from surfing the internet and block social media sites, force you to concentrate. However, if you have tight pockets and willpower, a good rule of thumb is to only allow one window or tab open on your computer at a time. 3. Grammar Outsource It. Apps like Grammarly will check your work as you write for correct spelling, grammar, and word choice. Bonus: the program also gives explanations as it corrects you, so you have a better understanding of why the suggestion is being made. Read It. But don’t read it from start to finish. Your brain will skip over all of the mistakes because you created the piece; youre too familiar with it. For short or very important pieces try reading the text backward (from the end to the beginning); mistakes will become glaringly obvious. For longer pieces try reading them out loud. Again, you’ll hear mistakes you would have missed reading it silently to yourself. 4. Fresh Ideas Take a page out of someone else’s book. Take a look at other books or blogs you enjoy reading and look for trends. Do you like how they summarize a piece? Do you like the hook they use for their start? Is there a topic that interests you as well? Use what you like as a starting point and make it your own. Try a new meme. Look for weekly or monthly memes that you can participate in. You can find these via other blogs you read or a Google search for your subject matter and ‘memes’ (i.e. â€Å"book blog memes†). Bonus: participating and commenting via the meme will build a larger network. 5. Lack of confidence You learn something new every day. Always remember that writing, like all arts, involves a constant state of learning. Even in the best writers there is room for improvement. Be consistent in your writing and it will get better with time. Join a group. Find a writers group online where you can get feedback from others. You’ll find that not only will they offer constructive criticism, but they’ll also offer compliments on what you’re already doing well! 6. No Traction If a tree falls alone in the forest, does it make a sound? Answer: Who knows? No one is around to hear it. The same is true for your blog. Blogs are a very social space to write in. If you want more people to view and comment on your blog, you need to take the time to view and comment on other people’s blogs as well. Sharing is Caring. Supporting smaller memes, posting for giveaways, and hyperlinking out to other blogs when appropriate are all great ways to not only support other bloggers, but to put you on their radar to get support in return. Remember, you can also do this via the social media channels attached to your blog too! 7. Word Choice Go Old School. It’s called a thesaurus. It’s the book that’s kind of like a dictionary but instead of giving you a definition, it gives you a list of other words that have similar and opposite meanings to the word you are looking up. Thankfully sites like Thesaurus.com make using it simple. ProTip: highlighting a word in a Google Doc or Word document and opening the shortcut menu will give you the option for synonyms it’s a quick and easy way to get a new word. Rule of Thumb. Never use the same descriptive word twice in a single sentence or within two sentences of its first (i.e. John liked playing on the playground. Playing on the swings was his favorite activity. Changed to: John liked playing on the playground. Swinging on the swings was his favorite activity). 8. Negative Comments â€Å"Bye Felicia†. Sometimes haters are just going to hate. If you receive comments that are purely negative delete them and move on. Remember that you have many readers who enjoy what you write, even if they aren’t so active at commenting. The Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have done to you. This means you don’t get to engage the commenter. Don’t have an argument with them on the comment boards, don’t email them nasty emails, and don’t go to their blog and trash them there. It will just make the situation worse Be Clear. Is the comment mean? Or does it offer constructive criticism? Remember, even if unsolicited, a critique of your work will only help you grow as a writer. 9. Idea A.D.D. A Plethora of Goodness . The opposite of writer’s block and yet just as paralyzing. When we have too many good ideas it can be difficult to pick, concentrate on, or follow through with just one. Try opening up multiple folders, documents, or posts and writing a description of a different idea in each space. Then pick one and devote a set amount of time to it (say 30 minutes) when time is up you can move on to another idea or stick with the one you chose if your creativity is on point. Bonus: the other documents you started can be great problem solvers when you’re struck with writer’s Block.

“Anthem For A Doomed Youth” By Wilfred Owen Essay Essays

â€Å"Anthem For A Doomed Youth† By Wilfred Owen Essay Essays â€Å"Anthem For A Doomed Youth† By Wilfred Owen Essay Essay â€Å"Anthem For A Doomed Youth† By Wilfred Owen Essay Essay Essay Topic: Anthem â€Å"Anthem for Doomed Youth† is an lament in which Wilfred Owen conveys his bosom felt unhappiness and disgust for the loss of life in World War I. This verse form shatters the fantasized images of war by juxtaposing the opposite universes of world and the romanticized rhetoric that distorts it. He writes about the true experience of military decease. and efficaciously expresses these powerful sentiments in merely 14 lines by usage of a slightly violent imagination that is compounded by the changeless comparing of world to myth. The verse form is intriguingly entitled. â€Å"Anthem for Doomed Youth. † Get downing with the rubric. Owen places his words into a context that contrasts with his message. An anthem is normally a loyal vocal of a group of people. state. or state as a agency to honour it. such as in the National Anthem. An anthem is a vocal that is supposed to raise up feelings of jingoism. and love for one’s state or group. Here in America. our National Anthem particularly reminds us of the soldier. who is invariably juxtaposed with the image of the† Star Spangled Banner† . The National Anthem is thought to be something that is synonymous with congratulations for one’s state and support of its military personnels. For Owen to call his verse form â€Å"Anthem for Doomed Youth† implies that those Doomed Youth have no other anthem to honour them. Owen is stating that the experience of the deceasing young person is non the 1 that is conveyed in the National Anthem. His statement is that his verse form expresses the true sentiment of the deceasing young person of war. In the first sentence. Owen begins depicting what he views as the reliable image of war by usage of an attention-getting analogy. This analogy postulates that the young person who are being massacred are deceasing like cowss. This is such a dramatic phrase because cowss unrecorded and decease the worst of lives. Cattles are bred merely for mass slaughter. and decease is inevitable for them. They are kept in confined topographic points. frequently surrounded by fencings and barbed wire. Cattle are besides considered to hold no intent in life except to function and nourish others. It is clear that this comparing of deceasing soldiers to cattle is non a blandishing one. and it is a comparing that would non be given by an advocator of war. It is in direct resistance to the description of heroism and award that comes frontward from the romanticized description of soldiers. Owen places this dramatic analogy at the terminal of a rhetorical inquiry that he himself answers in the following fe w lines. The inquiry that Owen asks is. â€Å"What go throughing bells for these who die as cowss? † The passing bells refer to the bells that are tolled after someone’s decease to denote that decease to the universe. Owen says that unlike a funeral emanation the lone things that announce the decease of these soldiers are the sounds of the instruments that killed them. He answers his opening inquiry by stating that the lone bells that are tolled are the unerasable sounds of war and decease. When depicting those sounds of war. Owen undertakings upon the reader the evil interests of war through words like â€Å"monstrous. † â€Å"anger. † and â€Å"rattle. † These are words that give the reader a gustatory sensation of fright. and a sense of repeating solitariness. The 2nd stanza continues in its comparison of the sounds and images of a funeral emanation to the sounds and images of a battleground. He uses graphic words to demo the abrasiveness of war in this stanza merely as he did in the first stanza. However. in the 2nd stanza. Owen focuses on imagination of unhappiness and compunction instead than evil and horror. Owen seems to be consecutive depicting the jobs with the war in the first eight lines. First. he ingrains on the reader the sights and sounds of the battleground. Then. he expresses the after effects of sorrow and unhappiness. For illustration. the 2nd stanza contains the words â€Å"mourning. † â€Å"wailing. † â€Å"bugles. † â€Å"sad. † and â€Å"shires. † all marks and descriptions of compunction. The concluding six brakes off greatly from the remainder of the verse form. The first two stanzas usage heavy imagination to exemplify the horrors of war. and the solitariness that accompanies it. The stanzas plaint over the fact that the soldiers die a decease of amour propre. and are non remembered. The words that are used are really rough and acidic in that they leave the reader with a feeling of the bloodshed and loss. The last stanza is more melancholic and brooding in its words than the old two. And unlike the first two stanzas. the inquiry that introduces them is answered in a manner that leaves the reader with some type of consolation. This feeling of hope in the six is culminated in the last lines of the stanza. demoing that the male childs will be remembered by some. Owen’s sobering imagination is greatly empowered through his apposition of conflicting thoughts of war. Another illustration of this is his arranging the verse form into a sonnet. Sonnets are usually written about subjects of love and love affair. Owen wrote about decease and disenfranchisement. The usage of the word â€Å"anthem† in the rubric adds to this manner every bit good. An anthem is normally a superficial. wellbeing. cockamamie vocal. This anthem is sad. gloomy. and somber. This use of sarcasm gives the verse form a flooring consequence by boxing the text of the verse form in the signifier of a sonnet and anthem while the verse form has a message that is antithetical to those two genres. This apparently self-contradictory attack makes the reader experience the power of Owen’s constructs because those constructs are so strongly contrasted by conflicting images.