Blogging for beginners: for whom do you write

This is a challenging question for all writers. The fact is you really cannot please everyone and it is often useful to find yourself at odds with at least some audiences. The alternative is to so average yourself that you end up not standing for anything. It is far better to be respected as a leader or authority in your focal area.

Writing, tough as it is, is still the easy part. Getting published, a near impossibility, is also relatively easy especially if you self-publish or put your own money on the table. Those all represent big enough challenges, of that I have no doubt, but the greatest challenge, by far, is marketing your work.

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Blogging for beginners: what should you write about?

Only you can really answer that question.

That said, the answer is as relevant as the answer to your career choices? Most people who choose to do what they were never designed to do, fail to do much that matters. Oh, of course, life is often like Joseph's dungeon, where we end up in spite of all our best intentions, yet, even then such dark moments are not about diverting our life course down another road. Indeed, it is in such dungeons that God lights up the dark to enflame the passion of our lives.

Who knows how relevant you will be for all your struggles and what a difference you could make for having worked through the issues that stand between you and victory?

We are but pie in the sky, empty clouds without water and hollow vessels, if our conversations are merely the product of reason. No amount of reason or learning can ever substitute for experience. Thus it is all about experiencing the heart that beats for this world, because we can only truly bring life once our hearts are ignited by the zeal of God.

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Blogging for beginners: Why blog at all

You may well think, as you look around, that blogging is irrelevant, the pursuit of individuals without a real life or who want to rant and rave even if no one is listening. That is somewhat naive, for there are many very useful sites out there and not a few of them belong to very significant people, people who use blogging as a real part of their Public Relations and Marketing efforts. As such, there are many very rich and meaningful sites out there that are really making a difference. 

So why should you blog?

There are a number of good reasons:

- Publicity

- Self-evaluation

- Accessibility

- Networking
- Economic 

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Some inspirational quotes and poetry for writers

"Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders” ~ Walter Bagehot

"We talked about our voices as writers--how they are strong and brave but how as people we are wimps. This is what creates our craziness. The chasm between the great love we feel for the world when we sit and write about it and the disregard we give it in our own human lives”~ Natalie Goldberg

"The story arises in the unconscious” ~Dorothea Brande

"What is The Subconscious to every other man, in its creative aspect becomes, for writers, The Muse”~ Ray Bradbury

"One writes out of one thing only--one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from the experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give” ~ James Baldwin

"It is a paradox of creativity that the very way to move beyond the conventional stage [of writing] is not to try harder, but to take a seeming step backward: to reawaken and cultivate in ourselves some of the ways we had of perceiving and expressing when we were children" ~ Gabrielle Lusser Rico

Poem by Frederick Lehman

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

Total communication is systemic, touching the entirety of others

Humans use multiple communications channels. Our five senses are vital for sensory inputs and for expression. Indeed, it might surprise you to know that people are far more influenced by perceptions than by what is actually heard or read. Non-verbal language accounts for over 60% of communication and listening is often better than telling.

That is why we experience so many mixed signals and misinterpretations in electronic communications. Without the further dimensions of non-verbal cues, communication is often cold, wooden and mechanistic. Symbolic gestures that amplify our feelings on a given subject, do help e.g. emphases, bold text, italics, emoticons, visuals or the tone of our communication. Its never going to be as rich as the real thing, but to preserve the efficiency of electronic communications, trade-offs are inevitable.

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7 habits of great writers: 7. Develop multiple communication channels

Before Jesus was born, the way (channel) was prepared so that when He stood up to speak to the people, his platform would be assured. God actually prepared that platform over a period of 4,000 years so that His ministry would have relevance to that world. Sin and judgment were two primary concepts that were ingrained in the social conscience before He came.

God also prepared the physical distribution channels, by introducing Jesus to the world only once the Romans had completed their roads and the Greek language had universalized communications. This also shows great attention to detail, which reflects how deeply serious God was about the process of salvation and judgment.

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7 habits of great writers: 6. Write right

The term, “well done good and faithful servant”, is reserved for those who faithfully steward what God entrusts to them. The Apostle Paul also challenged believers to “wait on your ministry”, implying that a gift needs to be honed into an effective instrument.

Cain was a man of original ideas, who showed no sensitivity to the needs of his audience and critic – God. If he had been more in touch with God, he would have taken a lot more trouble to do the right things, which Abel intuitively did.

Therein lies the soul of an effective writer or blogger – like Paul of old, that which we receive from God we faithfully entrust to the righteous, by the way we carefully steward His priceless truths.

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