Last week, I talked about developing an editorial calendar for your blog in the post, How to Choose a Blog Niche. Today, I would like to delve further into that topic. Developing an editorial calendar is great for Bloggers and Writers. Why? Because it gives you direction and focus. Also, it forces you to plan your time wisely.

As I stated in the How to Choose a Blog Niche post, to develop an editorial calendar for my blog, The Loudest Pen Ever, I simply wrote down each day of the week and wrote what post will correspond with what day. For writers, I recommend structuring your editorial calendar based on what you're writing. Meaning, if you are writing a novel, then plan to have chapters 1-5 done in the first six months or if you've written a poem, then plan to edit that poem on a day that you'll have free time.

The key to developing an editorial calendar is to be realistic about your time constraints and ability to complete tasks on the days they were scheduled to be completed. For example, Wednesday is Buzz-Kill of the Week on my other blog, the LPE because, this post is short and easy to write, and since I always work a double on Wednesdays, it would be almost impossible to try and write longer posts.

You can develop an editorial calendar through many different mediums, such as, Google Calendar, MS Word or Excel, on your BlackBerry or cell phone, or you can use old fashioned pen and paper. All you need is a calendar and the ability to plan your time. An editorial calendar is simply the planning of your writing time. You need to know when you are going to write/blog, edit, and then submit/publish your work. Being organized will make the process of writing a lot easier and less painful.

Remember when the page comes to life...so do you.

Today, I would like to talk about Writing Style and Why You Sould Experiment with different genres. Writing in many different genres can improve your writing and make you more diverse as an author.

How do you experiment with different genres? Simple, just do it. Write poems, short stories, screenplays, blog posts (on your blog or guest post on someone else's), or even a novel, if you're bold enough. When you first begin experimenting, your work may not be well read, and it may not even be that good. Don't worry about that, just write.

Writing is all about discovering yourself and your writing style, and exposing that path of self discovery to the world. Therefore, allowing yourself to write outside the box will give you freedom and will force you decide what type of writing you like to do best.

A writer that can write for many different genres attracts a broader audience. People will like and appreciate the fact that you are a multi-dimesional author. Why? Because, it means that you are a true writer. All you need is a pen, paper, and an idea and before long, the great American novel or screenplay has been written. Plus, being known for different genres means that you have the ability to please various audiences. Publishers will take note of this and your work is more likely to be published because they can publish your fiction or your non-fiction.

The last reason you should experiement with different genres is because it's fun. There's nothing like a change up. It gives you a chance to write about various things in a variety of ways. Too much of anything can kill you. Therefore, write whatever your heart desires, when your heart desires it, and maybe, just maybe, someone else's heart will desire it to.

Remember, when the page comes to life..so do you.

Today, I would like to talk about Blog Writing: Short Posts vs. Long Posts. There are many diffent ways to write Blog posts. Some posts are short and to the point, because, they rely on the pictures to do most of the talking. My fave examples of this are http://fashionbombdaily.com and http://theybf.com. These sites a fashion site and gossip site, respectively, and they let the picture be worth a thousand words, and they simply add descriptive sentences of the pictures. Other blogs are purely built on their written content and are usually harder to attaract an audience to. Pictures are easy to see and internalize, while written content requires that the reader, read your work, and then possibly interact with it by posting a comment.

So, how does one write a succesful short blog post? Once again, I am going to recommend the aforementioned sites: http://theybf.com/ and http://fashionbombdaily.com. Theybf.com or The Young, Black, and Fabulous is a website about black celebrity gossip. On theybf.com, Natasha (the site owner) uses catchy phrases, her own version of the English language, and fresh outspoken take on the life of rich, black celebs. The site is fun and entertaining. The fashionbomb.daily.com is all about fashionistas of color so, the posts are always vibrant pics of celebs in the latest trends. The written content is short and usually asks for feedback or interaction from readers. If you want your blog to get major interaction, then you should consider these types of posts. They are simple, easy to digest, and fun.

However, if you are a die-hard writer and want to use your blog as an outlet, then focus on your written content. Write great entertaining or informative posts that make people want to come back for more. If you want to be entertaining say outlandish things (if you're comfortable with that) that you know will make people laugh and therefore remember you. Or try to teach people something in the simplest way possible. Also, make sure the writing is conversational. The key to Blog writing is to make it readable and speakable simultaneously. Readers should feel like they know you. Even if your blog focuses on more serious topics there should still be a hint of your personality in your blog. After all, that's the great thing about blogging; blogging is not shackled to the notion of objectivity the way journalism is.

In conclusion, identify what type of Blogging you'd like to do short posts or longer posts, and then blog according to that style. Whichever, you choose doesn't matter just make sure you pick a style that works for you.

Remember, when the page comes to life...so do you.

Okay, so the last few posts focused on writing and blogging, but, today I want to focus on blogging. After reading, a post on http://careycarey-carrymehome.blogspot.com/,called I'm Blogging from the Cheap Seats...can you hear me? I realized that needed to write this post, I'll tell why later.

In the post Carey (the author) talked about how he's new at this blogging thing and made the metaphor that blogging can be like being at a concert, yelling from the nosebleed section where no one can hear you. Not only is this assertion true, but, it seems that alot of bloggers feel this way. Why? Because most of us don't really know what we're blogging about and so, of course it is hard to obtain readers.

Therefore, I would like to teach you how to choose a blog niche. How do you do this? Find a central point to blog around and then do it. Like if you interested in Fashion, then you can blog about fashion but, twist it and blog about Fashion don'ts instead of fashion dos. Or if you like Comedy then make your blog, humor based but, highlight comedians of the past. Whatever you blog is about just make sure it's unique and different and the accolades will come.

Also, you can do what I did for my other blog, The Loudest Pen Ever, and develop an editorial calendar. When I say editorial calendar, I mean that I wrote down each day of the week, and wrote a blog post title that I would blog about on that day. This gave me more direction and took a lot of pressure off of me, because, all I now had to do was write the actual post. The hardest part of blogging is figuring out what to blog about. But, if you have an editorial calendar, you now have a theme-based blog, and you never have to worry about what you will blog about and neither will readers.

Anyways, I hope this post has helped my fellow bloggers. And as my promised, I will be explaining why I wrote this post on tomorrow's post. The post is tentatively titled, How You Know You're A Blogger. So stop by tomorrow to check it.

Remember, when the page comes to life...so do you.