Posting with Meaning

I was once a blogger. I used to do it every day, and each post I wrote had meaning, it had a cause, and it was written with passion. My question to myself is have I lost that gusto I once had?

Can’t say I’ve lost it. Lost is a strong word, it’s a lot like ‘hate’. I can feel it sturing inside, wanting to come out, wanting to see the light of day after many years of solitude — but for reasons unknown to me, it’s hiding itself.  I have passion, I have gusto, I even have cause. What I’m missing is direction.  I lack the pathway that will put me on the course I want to be on.

In my years of writing, I’ve noticed that most people lack one of a few things when they begin their ventures into blogging.

• Direction: The direction is all about the focus. You need to have focus on your topic.  Readers of a ‘professional’ blog will not want to hear the fluff, unless the fluff directly ties to the topic at hand.  Grab the focus and keep in line with what your original plan for not only that specific post, but also the site as a whole.
• Cause: There has to be a reason to write. Whether it be to get a simple point across or to bring awareness to something you believe in, there has to be that little something in your head that says “this is why I’m writing it”. Find that little something every time you write and keep it front of mind.
• Passion: The emotion of what you believe has to come through in your writing, without it you will never keep the readers attention. This has become especially true with the release of Twitter and the ‘microblogging’ atmosphere. When I started writing back in the late ’90s to early 2000s, the attention span of readers was long. You could write a post with meaning and easily keep a readers attention.  In today’s world, it takes a lot more effort to keep the attention of  a population with the attention span of a goldfish (approximately 3 seconds) and 140 characters.