wurk»blogging {Your career. Your say.}

You’d think it would be easy, right? Moving from a traditonal writing job to a career in blogging. After all, blogging is just writing, right? It’s what you already do every day, so how hard can it be?

Damn hard. And here’s why…

I’ve been a professional writer for almost 10 years now. I’ve mostly been involved in advertising copywriting (press, print, DM, radio, TV, etc, etc, etc) with a little bit of PR and journalism thrown in. I was once the regional ‘correspondent’ for a European surf magazine, for example.

Anyhoo, I’m now trying to make the transition from that kind of writing to a very different kind of writing: blogging. But this post isn’t about the differences between them.

Right now, I have a (much more than) full time career as a freelance copywriter. It’s a busy job, make no mistake. I have clients the full length of the country, and they can be demanding. The upshot of it is that I spend all day writing - just like I have done for the last 10 years.

Now don’t get me wrong. I like writing. I like my job. And I like being freelance. It’s just that constantly working to tight briefs (note: I didn’t say ‘constantly wearing tight briefs’) and even tighter deadlines is starting to get to me. And that’s why running a blogging based business seems like a natural progression. There are no hard and fast deadlines. No real briefs to meet. And no clients to suck up (or down) to.

The only problem is that after all of the day’s other writing, sometimes the last thing I want to do is write some more - on a blog or anywhere else. And (in the short term, at least) know that I’m only going to be making a few cents from it, when for my other writing I can earn upwards of $500-$1000 a day.

It’s not just a problem for writers, though. For example, I’ve known plenty of mechanics (my brother included) who drive crappy cars, simply because after a week of fixing other peoples’ cars, the last thing they want to do is start messing about with theirs.

You get the picture. And therein lies the problem.

It affects your posting rate. It affects your motivation. And sometimes it brings down your whole opinion of blogging. However, one thing that I’ve done to help me get around this problem is to not simply start one or two blogs, but an entire network of blogs - and from that a fantastic little community has grown. That not only pumps a little bit of motivation back in, but it also brings a sense of responsibility to my blogging.

Because, on this blog at least, I’m blogging for the network and for the community.

Not just for me.

But I don’t for a minute imagine that this is an issue for people from other non-writing professions. You can see the enthusiasm for writing in non-writers’ blog entries. To most people, blogging and writing is new. It’s exciting. It’s different. It’s a a chance to be heard like never before. But most of all, it’s a complete diversion from crappy day jobs where creativity is stifled.

For writers, it’s not much of a diversion at all, however in most cases, the day job isn’t in the least bit crappy.

It’s just that sometimes, you really can have too much of a good thing. And if you’re already a writer, you’re actually most than halfway there to a successful career in blogging. Trust me, you have the advantage.

All you need to do now is find the motivation to use it.