Quiddity! - the SEO Blog

Indiana Jones isn’t the only one who can make a comeback, my friend. Not on your life. The man with the hat and a questionable interest in whips might be where the money is, but if like me you have a server or documents file full of finished, half-finished, half-baked, or barely tickled blog posts destined never to see the light of day, then you might just be sitting on a small goldmine.

Now here’s the part where I expect you’re thinking: "Hold on. This fool is about to offer me hard cash for the junk I never got around to finishing. Bob on!" – No cigar, I’m afraid, because it’s a goldmine of creativity that I wish to tap into.

The biggest worry of many a blog author – and I include myself in this sweeping generalisation – is where the next idea is set to come from. Or the ever-present burden of: how long have I got before the inspiration dries up? With everything else in life that needs taking into consideration it can be hard enough when you’re publishing a new blog post once a week, so if you’re at it every day I expect it can become a particular nightmare.

I’ve banged on about it many a time before, and it sometimes amazes me I’m still here to tell the tale – Good for me, bad for everybody else – but my suggestion for when you’re really feeling the pressure to write something, yet the words refuse to come, is to revisit one of these abandoned posts and entertain the beast once more.

But hold on one minute there, sir. Before you proceed further with this foolishness, may I be so bold as to ‘state the bleeding obvious’ and point out that there’s a reason these posts have been discarded, or left unfinished – They’re no bloody good!

Good point, but can I just say that it is in every likelihood that your biggest critic will always be yourself. That’s assuming you’re not one of these people that believes the entire universe revolves around them alone, and by such a token are impervious to all forms of criticism.

I know that if I listened to my own criticism, I’d never publish anything. And I’m sure the world would be an altogether better place for it – not my ego though.

So putting to one side self-criticism's uncanny knack at colouring what is a perfectly good piece of writing or idea, and assuming that the article really is rubbish, I’m not going to say publish it as it stands, for along that path lies a world of pain and ridicule. Instead, break what you have down. Chip away at those little golden nuggets that sparkle within. Find the original idea that, the rich seam that triggered the post in the first place and go over it with a fresh pair of eyes. Take a run at it from a different angle or incorporate some new, complimentary idea, to remould and reshape the initial notion. Start it over again, and maybe this time take an opposing view. There are so many ways you can develop the idea away from what originally caused you to falter.

Rinse and repeat the process as many times as you feel necessary, until all the cracks are filled and you have a finished product you’d be happy to take home to meet your mom.

Even if it had a topical edge to it and was strictly of the time, ie: "How to improve search engine ranking with meta keyword tags", there may still be something worth salvaging there.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and all that. An idea is an idea at the end of the day, just waiting to be interperated in any number of different ways. And so a long forgotten blog post, destined to live out the remainder of its days in destitution and anonymity, may just be what you need when the creative juice is flowing at its lowest ebb.

So go on. Whip the covers off one of those lost souls, whack a couple of jumpleads up its bracket, and let the beast run free.

And if you liked that thinking, why not give these the once over:

Blogger's Scourge - A Melodrama in One Part
Five Reasons why the Need to Blog Outweighs the Desire
The Beauty of the Blog
How (Not) to Write That Difficult Second Post