I’ve often read that to become a great writer you should make time to write everyday. I don’t know about you, but I have found it is quite impossible to be that consistent with my writing. I really have to get into a writing state of mind before I can produce anything remotely resembling something of quality. The writing process is not a hit and run exercise for me. I cannot sit down for twenty minutes and fire off three pages and feel content about it.

Sometimes you just don’t have that hour or so to concentrate on your story. I don’t care how many times you hear someone tell you to “make time”, you just can’t make something out of nothing. I believe a blog is an ideal alternative so you can continue to write while using only a fraction of the time. You may not finish your screenplay or novel anytime soon, but keeping a story blog can be extremely useful in a number of ways. While it may not be typical to use  blog to develop a story, it can certainly double as your place to put down your story thoughts when you’re short on time.

• It can help keep your writing fresh. Even a couple short paragraphs of your story, random notes,  or personal dribble is better than closing the door completely on writing. Like anything else, in order to stay sharp at something, you have to remain active so you can continue to produce at a higher level.
• Short posts relating to your story can serve as an outline for those times when you do finally get to sit down and dedicate substantial time to your project. Stringing these smaller entries together will at least keep you moving forward instead of the other alternative of complete writing abandonment.
• Writing about your story in small increments keeps you in the story. You may have your plot all mapped out and your character motivations memorized, but certain details are forgotten when your manuscript in the making is collecting dust. When you’re away from your writing for  too long, you lose your train of thought, your direction, and your focus.

It’s great to be able to keep your story alive through short blog posts, but the primary use of a blog is also extremely beneficial to an author too. If you’re a brand new author without a following, a blog (coupled with social networking profiles) is probably your best shot at connecting with potential new readers. This is especially true for the author attempting to travel down the self-publishing route. If you’re an established author, chances are you already have a blog and you are aware of the advantages of being able to increase your fan base and interact with your readers.

Although there are ample rewards to the blogging author, there is also one major pitfall that can be a detriment to writing your story. Blogging.  Yes, blogging. Just as a blog can help you continue writing, it can also be a major distraction and impair your writing nearly as bad as writer’s block. Blogging is quicker, it’s easier, and it requires less thought and concentration. It’s a lot easier to blog than it is to settle in for a few good hours and put some serious words to paper. Blogging your story should be the exception or a temporary solution when time comes at a premium. If blogging does become the first choice of writing for the aspiring screenwriter or novelist, then this solution has now become part of the problem.

A question that every writer is bound to face sooner or later is,”What is the best time to write?”

The politically correct answer would be: “When inspiration strikes” or even a, “When you feel like it.”

But if you write on a regular basis, or have a regularly updated blog, I am sure, you are aware that waiting for inspiration to strike you is a definite recipe for not getting anything written. Sometimes, you are so far from being inspired that you are actually looking for excuses to do anything but write. How can you get yourself to write during such times?

If you want to be taken seriously as a writer, or a blogger, you have to meet deadlines and, more likely than not, write according to a schedule. Also, if you want to make money as a writer, writing to a schedule becomes even more important.

Web content writing and website promotion is the first niche that I started breaking into. I am still learning about writing different types of web pages and I have experience in writing SEO articles and article marketing. Here is an overview of this niche and some tips regarding how to get started with this type of writing and how to do it well.

Different Types of Web Content

Blogs. For freelance writers, blogging is an important tool. Maintaining a blog with high quality posts is an easy and free way to self-publish, build your portfolio, establish credibility on certain subjects, and market yourself as a writer. Blogging can also open doors for your writing career. Writing blog posts for other people or companies can become a regular paying job in itself if you write for enough clients.

SEO Writing. Search Engine Optimization includes the methods used to raise the ranking of a website. SEO writing is basically preparing content that is rich with popular keywords or phrases and links. There is an increasing demand for writing website pages, articles, and blog posts that will attract search engines and place websites among the top links on the first page of the search results on popular search engines. It is not as complicated as it sounds, and it is actually one of the quickest ways to start earning money when freelancing online.

The longer you don’t blog the harder it is to blog, and that’s really how any kind of writing is. You get out of practice to the point that trying to say anything in prose feels stilted and difficult. It’s not a use it or lose it proposition though. You can get back on the blogging bandwagon. There’s hope. You’ll find it in my 12 Step Program for the Blogging Blas:

1. Perfectionism is not an excuse for procrastination. So put a pen and notepad by your keyboard right now. Throughout your workday be on alert for topical tidbits that show some blog post potential. Don’t worry about how you’ll expand on the subject. Just write the idea down and move on. For example, you have a discussion on Twitter that makes you think about something in a different way. Write it down. Or you see something in the news that relates to your product or service. Write it down. Then continue whatever it is you were doing. The ideas will percolate in your subconscious while you do other things. I learned this by accident to be honest but John Edwards also talks about this in his now famous 7DayEbook.
2. At the end of the day, review your list. Anything else come to mind? A fresh angle? Another happening you could expand on in a way that relates to what you do? This step might seem moot if you don’t actually add anything to your list, but just do it anyway. It helps your ideas take “root” in your creative subconscious. Now go to bed or have a brew or do whatever you normally do at the end of the day. And completely forget about your blog and the fact that you can’t think of anything to write about. Think about anything but work in fact. (Yes it can be done.)

Several years back, a friend of mine started a blog and e-mailed the link to me and a bunch of her other friends. I didn’t *get* her blog or anyone else’s. In fact at the time, I thought most blogs were self-indulgent, boring, and poorly written. And as someone who puts a high premium on privacy, I couldn’t get past the idea that my friend was willingly broadcasting intimate details about her life into cyberspace. It was as mystifying to me as the people who go on the Jerry Springer Show and spill all.

Another turnoff was the fact that every blog I encountered seemed like the electronic version of a hard copy diary that should have remained tucked away in a box in the back of an out-of-the-way closet—embarrassing content, poor writing, and all. Why were people spending all kinds of time writing online drivel that no one really cared about? And furthermore, why were people spending all that time writing blog posts that they’d never even get paid for?

I could only come up with one explanation. In my mind, blogging was just a socially acceptable way for bad, wannabe writers to go mainstream with their poorly written rants and diatribes about things that made no difference to anyone else but the writer, a handful of family members, and other poor captive souls who loved the bloggers enough to read all their bad prose. In fact, if someone mentioned that they had a blog, my mind would click into sleep mode like my MacBook does after 10 minutes of inactivity. I’d think: Oh, one of those self-indulgent wannabe writer types. Where’s the nearest exit?

It’s not news that the news industry is changing rapidly, and the traditional newspaper and magazine industry is in a whole mess of trouble.

Newspapers are losing readers at an alarming rate to online reading — and readers are reading not only newspapers, but blogs and many other types of sites.

Newspapers are trying to find a model for making money online, but they’re not learning fast enough, not adapting fast enough. Online ads can’t support them, because now the monopoly for publishing news and commentary has been broken, and advertising has been spread out among thousands and thousands of sites.

How can the newspaper industry adapt? Well, they’ll either have to figure that out quickly, or they’ll die.

As a former journalist and editor at a Gannett-owned newspaper, I have some thoughts — things I’ve learned from my career as a blogger at Zen Habits.

1. Smaller is better. Newspapers can’t survive on online ads not because it’s an impossible model for publishing — I do it at Zen Habits and many other blogs and smaller news sites do it. They can’t survive on online ads because they’re too huge. Not only do they have a newsroom of journalists and editors, but they have copy editors, layout editors, graphic artists, photographers, managing editors and more. And that’s just the newsroom — one small part of a newspaper company. There’s also advertising, production (the presses and so on), circulation (the delivery of newspapers), accounting, the IT department, human resources, and overall management (the publisher, president, vice president, staff, etc.).