Do you remember the wise-cracking, bloodthirsty plant from Little Shop of Horrors?
Audrey II is a giant Venus flytrap-like plant with a bad attitude and teeth to match.
It bullies, mocks, and cajoles its owner, Seymour, and is in constant need of human blood to survive.
Well, that’s everything that you need to know about writing online. Be that for your blog, your website, or any of the various publishing platforms that are out there.
Does that sound a little melodramatic? Well I’m sat here with a cup of tea, and in a giddy mood, so that may have something to do with it. So, please humour me.
How to Survive the Little Shop of Horrors of Content Creation
Feed me
Feed me
Feed me
Feed me, Seymour
Feed me all night long— Audrey II, The Little Shop of Horrors
Tell me if this sounds familiar to you.
You love to write, and you want to write, so you throw caution to the wind and start to write with delirious abandon.
But before you know it where you write has become a monster, hungry for blood, that you must feed.
Ok, so not actual blood, but the metaphorical blood, sweat, and tears of a writer.
Writing is a hungry beast, sometimes, isn’t it?
The question is how do we write every day when the publication beast rears its ugly head and needs feeding.
At first things are great. People may even start to take an interest in your work. But once the Honeymoon is over you’re faced with the daunting task of producing regular content.
For that’s what your beloved writing has become. Content. With an audience, that has the average attention span of a gnat, who may leave if you drop the ball in any way.
Or, God forbid, you take a break or stop publishing on a regular schedule. Your readership abandons you and you’re left bleeding by the side of the road. Again with the melodrama, we get it.
Gone is the magic of writing words. You’re a content provider. And don’t get me started on the constant need to promote your writing to get people to read it.
Do you have social media accounts? Do you have a newsletter? Well, those hungry monsters all need feeding too, you know?
How do you take a time out? Or write something that requires research? Is that even a thing?
All you want to do is write. But these days if you want to make it as a writer, at least online, that means that you have to write a lot.
You need to write at speed and with great consistency. All at the same time as producing things that are actually worth reading.
You can’t keep up with the demand for your content. Let alone the promoting, networking, or marketing that goes with it.
But what if you want to take time out to concentrate? To write and research a much bigger piece? Is that ok?
Will the hungry monsters eat you alive? Will your readers get bored or shout at you? Is it ok to step away from the treadmill?
You need to create breathing room for yourself. You need to take time out to write the stuff that you love. And you need a way to keep track of it all.
The biggest challenge for a lot of us is to produce content every day.
How often should you publish? Daily? Weekly? Monthly. The jury is still out on that one. But it’s almost a given that you should at least write every day.
How can you keep going at that pace and still write decent stuff that people want to read? I ask for a friend.
Oh, right, you were hoping that I’d have all the answers?! Lucky for you, I do, as it happens. Well, some of them.
Okay, for what it’s worth, here are some of mine. Here are my strategies that will help you to feed your content-hungry monsters.
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