How to Write a Creative Non-Fiction Weekly Blog

(the story of a personal endeavor)

Step 1: Decide to write a blog every Tuesday. Why? Because you started on a Tuesday of course! And what better way to begin an unknown length project than on the day that you attend school for 12 hours. In a perfect world, after cramming information into a brain for half a day, that brain would still be capable of forming a coherent thought at the end of that period. This, however, is hardly ever the case.

Step 2: Write blog in the infinitesimally small amount of time between first night class and second night class. Why? So you have the smallest amount of time to work on it. Obviously it would be impossible to write it during the two hour lunch break you have earlier in the day, which you most often use to do all homework for the last half of the day and catch up on Doctor Who reruns. Blog writing could never separate you and the Doctor. With any luck, the next version of Windows will be able to divide the screen into at least 5 sections: one for watching Netflix online, one for checking Facebook, one for cramming for a test, one for finishing last night’s homework, and one for writing your crazy-successful blog. Hopefully.

Step 3: Completely blank out on topics for blog right before needing to write it. This step may also be labeled: fail to write down amazing blog ideas during the week, forming a list of ideas to pull from. This blog ought to be called: random subjects I come up with on Tuesdays. I am almost sure that if I wrote a blog on Wednesdays, they would perhaps be more angst-y, or maybe on Fridays the blog might be more fun and exciting. However, on Tuesdays, the blog is just rushed and mundane. Which is how we like it over here on the other end of the blogosphere.

Step 4: Write the blog quickly without rereading or revisions before posting. This point is one that I stand by almost religiously. Rereading and revising waters down the raw emotion of the piece. You said what you meant to say the first time you said it. revising is only your left brain telling you that it is unacceptable. Do not reread until after you have made the piece permanent. Until you can no longer take it back. You can never revise your first draft. A revised copy is a whole new piece, completely different from what you started with. So: never reread or revise.

Step 5: Finally: anxiously await replies to new blog post. This step is especially effective when you only have a readership of roughly 5. The anxiety caused may even ride you over to next Tuesday, hopefully causing you to churn out a better, more poised, more polished post. At this step, it is time to face the music.

You are writing a creative non-fiction blog. You are not reporting on important events, or posting pictures of kittens with funny subtitles, or even compiling recipes or game cheats. What you are writing is a Van Gogh. It may only be recognized as art after you are long gone. Maybe you’ll never be recognized at all. But there is one thing I know for certain: its good enough to just get it out there.