It’s all fun and games until the flying monkeys attack. 

    Inspired by The Wizard of Oz

The word practice can be used as both a noun and a verb.  Today, we usually see it used as a noun: My Yoga Practice, My Meditation Practice and for me ─ My Writing Practice. We don’t often see it used as a verb.  I think this is largely due to the fact that we live in times of instant gratification. Everything is fast: food, instant downloading of music, books, movies and communication using email, Skype, Twitter and Facebook.  Let’s face it, we don’t wait for much.  Practice used as a verb tends to be sloooooooooooow, repetitive,  time consuming, often boring and a lot work.  I can remember practicing Palmer Method writing ─ endlessly! I had a hard time wth the letter “r”.

This is me practicing blogging as opposed to it being My Blog Practice.  I used this quote because it sums up what I have been doing here.  Setting up and announcing the blog was definitely all fun and games. It was great to be able to say, “Come read my blog.” But now the flying monkeys are attacking and I have to actually practice blogging. 

My approach has been to slink around a lot of blogs.  There are several that I was already reading regularly. I really enjoy The Hen Blog by Terry Golson .   Watching Terry’s chickens can make even the gloomiest day bearable.  Terry is a  professional chef  and food writer who sometimes posts wonderful recipes, too. She knows all about chickens.  There are lots of blogs out there and they are all different.  The key to successful blogging is discovering what makes the reader want to come back. So, of course, I return to the blogger book. In fact, now I have another book (but you probably already knew that.) Branding Yourself  by Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy. Having already selected the platform (WordPress) which is part of the fun and games, I move onto the monkeys. I need to:

• Figure out what to write about – this is tricky because I worry that what interests me might bore you to death. I guess I will find out. I plan to post mostly about writing, the current state of publishing and the books I am reading but I am sure that other things will show up even a recipe or two. Unfortunately, one of the known cures for writer’s block is eating.
• Post often – My goal is to post at least three times a week.
• Use my own voice – Writers know about voice because you have to be able to give your characters distinctive voices.  I just need to dust off my own.

What is that you like to see in the blogs that you follow regularly? What turns you off?