Writing An Article A Day – Tips To Actually Get It Done
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I’ve committed to writing and submitting 100 articles to Ezinearticles.com the last 100 days of the year. All articles will point in one way or another to this blog and help me grow readership and traffic. You can read the original post about my online article writing challenge here.
Since I’ve been doing this for about a week now, I thought I’d share a few tips and thoughts with you on writing an article a day.
How To Write An Article A Day
To be honest, the first week has been a bit of a challenge. I didn’t really prepare for this. My daughter mentioned there were 100 days left in 2009 and I decided to just commit to writing an article for each of those days. I kinda forgot about the fact that I was heading out of town for a blogging conference a few days later and had already committed to quite a bit of writing on one of my other websites as well. Then my daughter got sick, I caught a cold….
… but guess what? Stuff like this always happens. It’s called LIFE. The trick is to get it done anyway. Here’s how I did it.
Write First Thing In The Morning
Whenever possible I would sit down and write and submit an article first thing in the morning – usually even before I checked email. My brain was fresh and I could work out a topic and outline in my head while I was getting my daughter ready for school.
I write my best articles this way and it takes me the least amount of time. It also helps that it’s usually pretty quite around here in the mornings.
Don’t Go To Bed Until It’s Finished
Another strategy that worked some nights was to not allow myself to go to bed until I had an article written and finished. I recommend you use an easy format like a 7 tips article when you’re doing this. If you’re really tired, don’t submit the article that night. Read and edit as needed the next morning and then submit it.
Do Something – Anything To Get You Moving Forward
Then there were those days were I just couldn’t get an article written at all. There were a few days like that at the conference where I was so tired by the time I finally made it back to my room, I couldn’t think well enough to write. The same was true on the day my cold really kicked in. In both cases I sat down and did something, often just jotting down topics or writing a quick outline for an article. In one case I got the title and author resource box done before calling it quits.
Just having those small pieces in place helped me catch up later this week.
Get at least something done each day to move you in the right direction.
Catching Up
Even using all the tips above, I ended up getting about 3 articles behind rather quickly. I ended up digging out some of those article pieces and outlines I’d been working on and just sat down this morning and wrote and submitted a total of four articles. (Three to catch up and one for today).
Another option would have been to simply double up and write two articles for a few days. Pick whatever works for you, but don’t let yourself get any further behind if you can help it.
And here are some things I’m implementing right now to make sure I don’t get behind in the future.
I’m Getting Organized
I have a folder on my laptop for this challenge with sub folders for topic ideas, work in process articles, finished articles and submitted articles.
I also followed Bridgett’s example (see her comment on the article writing challenge blog post) and am keeping a master document with all articles.
Getting Ahead
Do you ever have those days where the writing just flows and you can just keep going and going? I’m taking advantage of those days by writing as much as I can putting everything else on hold.
I’m also scheduling some “catch-up” time each week. If I don’t need those extra two hours to finish writing and submitting articles, I just do something fun I want to do (like read a book, get a pedicure etc.) Just the motivation of having that extra “free” time at the end of the week is keeping me motivated to not get behind.
Other than that I’m just doing a little something each day to make sure I stay ahead of the game. I come up with a few extra article topics, do some research, write some outlines etc. I don’t always write a whole extra article, but even those little things add up over time and if they cause me to write just one or two extra articles a week, that works for me.
I’m sure the head start will come in handy the next time life gets in the way and I get behind on my article writing.
P.S. Did you join us yet? There are still plenty of days left in the year and it’s never to late to commit to writing some more articles. Just read through the article writing challenge post and leave a comment to join in. Then come back and report on your progress.
You may also like to read:
- Article Marketing Tips – 3 Important Things To Avoid When Your Writing Articles
- Online Article Writing Challenge – 100 Articles in 100 Days
- Article Markeing Strategy – Create A Flood Of Traffic with Your Article Writing System
- 30 Minute Article Writing System – How To Write And Submit An Article In Under Half An Hour
- Clickbank and Article Writing For Commissions – CopyCat Recipe Casestudy Update
Tags: 100 articles in 100 days, an article a day, article writing tips, writing an article a day
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I have fallen behind too. We were out of town last weekend and will be out again this weekend. I am currently three behind but still very committed to making this happen. My strategy is to do two per day until I am caught up. On a brighter note, Ezines seems to be approving my articles rather quickly and I am seeing some traffic already!
I noticed the same thing with Ezinearticles.com . I wasn’t sure if it was because I finally reached 10 articles under the S.Myers pen name or what. Maybe they were just finally able to clear out the backlog and are keeping up with pending articles better. Either way, I’ll take it
Good idea on catching up by writing two articles a day. I’m planning on really getting ahead on mine this weekend so I have a bit of a buffer. It would be really nice if we could be done before Christmas, wouldn’t it?
Did you link to the google document you put together for this?
I’ve found that my inspiration to write comes in bursts, so I tend to write a few articles at a time while the motivation is there. Then I write less often but still get some good writing accomplished.
You could even choose a topic and write three or four articles on one topic from slightly different angles and submit them to article directories with some different articles in between. Or write an article series in one sitting and divide a larger comprehensive article into two or three smaller ones.
I’m admittedly not very good at taking a task like this (accomplishing a # of something in X days) because I have difficulty staying accountable to myself at times, but when I have had to do something similar, chunking it like what I described above has worked for me.