If you’ve written for a print publication, you’ve had the bittersweet experience of submitting a story and having your headline written for you. It’s great, because another human being has to go through the agonizing experience of writing the perfect headline for your story. It’s also horrible, because this little baby that you’ve nursed and cradled and nurtured to perfection is now turned over to a perfect stranger, who for all you know will mangle it with a clunky humdrummer.

But as a blog writer, you no longer have the luxury of writing brilliant, untouchable prose and letting someone else do the hard work of writing the headline. And as a blog writer, the half a dozen or so words of the headline just happen to be the most important half a dozen words you will write.
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By Leo Babauta

Image from iStockPhoto

If you’re like me — and if you’re a freelancer, you’re probably like this — you procrastinate on your assignment because, well, you just don’t feel like doing it right now. There are tons of reasons why: it’s an intimidating project, you’re not sure how to start, or simple inertia stops you from getting started.

A solution that works every time: break the job into smaller bits, and do those bits in bursts.

That may sound obvious, but not many people put this to optimal use. Too often they procrastinate because they’re stuck with a daunting task on their to-do list. If that’s you, try these 10 productive tips:

Granularize. Got a project? Just put the very next physical action on your to-do list, not everything on the list. Is that task still too intimidating? Break it down even further. For example, instead of writing a whole article, write the intro. Or do an outline. Instead of doing a whole graphic design, just do a sketch. Or start by brainstorming. Or searching the web for ideas (don’t get lost on the web).

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If you want to be a good writer, read good writing. That, and practice.

Those are the two keys for becoming a good blog writer. Everything else is mechanics. Thus it follows that if you want to be a good blog writer, you should read blogs with good writing.

What follows is a list of 15 blogs you really should be reading if you want to be a good blog writer — at least, read them for awhile until you get the gist of their style. Read them entirely for style, not content. The information isn’t as important as how they write.

Now, before you get offended at this list, please let me note that 1) it’s not comprehensive — there are many other well written blogs out there, and I can’t possibly name all of them; 2) these aren’t necessarily the most popular blogs, although there are some very popular ones here — these are ones that have good blog writing; 3) the writing on these blogs aren’t necessarily works of art, but are great examples of how to write for this medium. The writers on these blogs understand what makes a good blog post, beyond catchiness or just good grammar.

Here they are, in no particular order:

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If you’re like most writers, you procrastinate. You have a hard time getting started writing, unless you’re seized by a burst of inspiration. Instead, you might do some “research” online, fiddle with your to-do list, or work on a number of other tasks instead of doing the writing you need to do.

If you’re having trouble getting your writing done, try creating a morning writing ritual. You can get a lot more done each day, as an early boost of productivity will spur further productivity throughout the day.

Why create a morning routine? A few reasons:

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By Leo Babauta

Image from iStockPhoto

Over the last fortnight or so, I’ve had some thrilling success on social bookmarking sites such as Digg and delicious, in articles that I’ve written for a few different blogs (including last week’s 7 Ways to Crank Out Articles). Now, these posts weren’t written specifically to get Dugg, but I have learned a thing or two about writing a popular post, and why it matters to freelance blog writers.

Let’s take a little look today at why a freelance blog writer should care about writing popular posts:

It makes you valuable. If you are writing freelance for a blog, you want to give them your very best content, and give their readers great value with your writing. But if you also write a post that does hugely well on Digg (for example), you’ve just given your employer something that’s not easily achievable. Sure, the big sites can make the front page of Digg nearly any day of the week, but trust me, they still care about it. And to medium and smaller blogs, those types of successful posts are pure gold.

Looks good on your resume. Well, you probably won’t literally list your popular posts on your resume, but if you contact any potential employers to do some freelance writing, you can mention that you’ve had 12 popular posts on Digg in two months. They’ll hire you in a flash.

It’s a bit of a thrill. To know that thousands of people like your article is like a validation that you’re a good writer. But if you are looking for validation, don’t read the comments on Digg. They’re pretty vicious.

Now, you should know that it’s not easy to get on the front-page of Digg, and it can take a bit of luck. Often you might write an article that you think will do well, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Other times you don’t expect an article to do anything, and it just takes off. It helps if another popular blog links to the article to get the ball rolling.

But given all of that, there are some things you can do to write an article with powerful potential to become popular:

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One of my best skills is being able to turn out a high number of articles each week. My output varies depending on the complexity and length of a story, but I can crank out anywhere from 3-6 articles a day — which doesn’t hurt the pocketbook.

But writing productivity doesn’t come easy. All writers grapple with procrastination: you know you should be writing right now, but you find a million other things to do instead.

It’s not an insurmountable obstacle. You can squash the distractions and procrastination and crank out articles like a maniac with some simple hacks.

Here are some of the best methods for writing productivity:

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We’d like to welcome our newest contributer, Leo Babauta. Leo Babauta has been a reporter, editor, speech writer and freelance writer for the last 17 years, and writes about simple productivity on his highly successful blog, Zen Habits.

If you’re a freelance writer who’s written for newspapers and magazines, or an English or communications major who’s an old pro at writing papers, or even just someone who’s always written well, you might think your talent will translate directly into awesome blog writing.

You’d only be half right.

As a freelance journalist (for the past 15+ years), I’ve discovered that writing for blogs is a bit different (sometimes quite a bit different) than writing for other mediums, and understanding those differences can help you write amazing blog posts and get a ton of readers. Be a blog writer, not just a writer, and you’ll find success in this new medium.

First, let’s note a few ways in which writing for blogs and writing for a print publication are the same:

• The basic rules of writing don’t change. You see some blogs where all rules of spelling or capitalization or grammar are thrown out. And there’s definitely not the same formality about blogs as there is in print. But you still want people to read this stuff, and if you throw out the basic rules, it makes reading more difficult.
• Still go for concise. Sure, with blogs, space isn’t as limited as it is with print media, but the readers’ time is still limited — probably even more so, if they do a lot of online reading. So save them time by getting to the point quickly, and allowing them to move on. Otherwise they might not read your article at all.
• You still have to be interesting, useful, newsworthy or humorous – or a combination thereof. These rules apply to print and blogs equally. Many blogs don’t understand these rules (and for that matter, neither do some print writers), and therefore suffer the consequences.

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