Introduction

At the moment, when I’m putting pen to paper, or rather, fingers to key, it feels quite easy. 

However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t points of friction. These are the ones I’ve jotted down (not exhaustive):

• Not putting pen to paper in the first place i.e. not thinking there’s enough time or can’t be bothered
• Not having structure to the post, making the post confusing to read 
• No direction, meaning it’s harder to understand myself what I want to write
• Not thinking about how to conclude

During the hard times when the inspiration dries up, I need to have a back up process in place 

so I don’t go from 100% to 0%. I want to keep the blog moving forward, even if it’s at a snail’s pace.

My ingenious, never-thought-of-before idea to assist in minimising these barriers of friction is…drum roll please…to make a template for writing a blog post! Where are the fireworks? 

In search of a template 

The first thing was to look on Google. Google obviously spat millions of results back at me, so I had a look at the first few. A taster of the links I looked at: link 1, link 2. 

I have nothing against these posts. They most definitely add value and someone will be happy with what was written, but for me these do not provide a shape I want to work within; it felt a bit over-developed. Also, at no point do I intend to give you 9 pros of a premium garden waste bin having compared that to two hundred other articles doing exactly the same thing. That’s not what I’m trying to do here.

Therefore I had the thought ‘why not come up with my own template that makes sense to me?’

Wow. Just wow. Taking back control!

I went about nicking good bits from around the place as well as my own mind, and this blog post is a product of that. Be warned, it might stink. It might not. It might add value to you. It might not. I’m going to be giving it a whirl and then iterate. Feel free to judge on the quality.

The shaping of a template

Firstly, I had to sketch out a typical outline that might work for me, structured enough to provide…structure, vague enough to not limit. The core of this is Observation and Response / Insight. This tallies for me because often the idea for a post comes from a ‘huh, what’s happening there’ moment (Observation), or maybe after reflecting, I have an ‘ah, that was a consequential thought!’ moment (Insight).

I did toy with rephrasing it as problem and solution, but no. I don’t want to necessarily view everything as a problem waiting to be solved. Problem/solution can stay in its rightful place as a subset of observation/response.

After those absolute fundamentals, all blog posts must start and all must end. Therefore an Intro and a Conclusion are required. Therefore, my structure looks like:

• Intro
• Observation
• Response / Insight
• Conclusion

That’s it. Four sections. 

Embedding the template

I have then gone and created a Google Doc called ‘template’ and put that in my bookmark bar.

Each section has a ‘Writing’ box. Observation and Insight have an additional ‘Notes’ box above the writing box, where I can jot bullet points. There is also a box at the very top for me to make more general bullet points on direction/main outline. 

I’ve given myself a few check questions:

• Is it my personal experience?
• Is it relatable? Does it come across as relational?
• Is it about increasing awareness?
• Are you trying to claim a general life rule that might not actually apply?
• Are you overcommiting e.g. ‘this is…’ when it should be ‘I think this is…’
• Do you need to refer to previous blog post for this to make sense?
• Are you being concise? 

When I want to write a new post or have a new idea, I click on the template in the bookmark bar, create a copy (dating the post) and include that draft in the bookmark bar as well for ease of access. 

Concerns

Two concerns I have:

• Posts become formulaic – I think this is me being squeamish about something that I don’t actually recognise as an issue for other bloggers. All the successful bloggers have their own structure in which they work. Why would it be an issue for me?
• The tension between free-flowing and structure: There is something about freestyle writing that is just fun. You can go anywhere with it. You don’t have to think. Therefore I think I need to work out how I navigate this tension. Maybe the template comes in once I’ve sussed out the writing elsewhere. Maybe not. I will see how it develops. 

Conclusion

If you’re looking for inspiration for whatever your pursuit is and wondering about next steps, I hope you saw that I am going through exactly the same issues. I will see how this evolves going forward. Of course, stay tuned in order to see how it develops as well, as you wouldn’t want to miss out on this, would you?