Blogging Tip of the Day: Vol. 90

Today's Tip: Do you have the ability to evolve? Theoretically speaking we all evolve with each passing day, but do you have hard held beliefs that are interfering with your ability to grow as a blogger? I know I did, and let me tell you I suffered because of a lot of them. As I explain this to you now, I just hope you understand that I know from experience that our own "self imposed" rules are one of the worst things in our blogging existence. The hardest part of it all is understanding (especially when we are new) that we don't know what we think we know. Here's a short list of rules that I imposed on myself and why they almost ruined me before I started ..

1. I was never going to put a picture in my blogs, because I was all about the writing! (Boy aren't you a genius, by the time you were down to one reader you still couldn't figure out why nobody new came along and started reading you)
2. I was never going to post more than once a day! (More genius level thinking there, All I had to do was write that one blog that pissed everyone off, and then let that fester in them for a day without some way of recovering my audience with what they usually come there for)
3. I will never explain myself and my stupid brilliant ideals, because my audience will figure it out on their own! (Or like most normal human beings they will go and be entertained by someone who doesn't treat them like they are in school)
4. I will never have more than one blog, because everyone will love EVERYTHING I say! (See Number 2, and then assume that posting dumbassery more than once a day will be something you can recover from)
5. I will adapt to my readers as I go! (The squeaky wheel gets the grease. You'll find that in the real world the people who seek to change you are only in it to change you. They have no intention of sticking around once you have changed)

In other words, when I was young and dumb I did things that were young and dumb. As I evolved as a writer the first thing I had to do was let go of the ideals that held me back. It's ok to have morals, it is ok to have hopes and dreams and blah blah blah, but every one of those things that compromise your writing is actually a flaw, and not an ideal. Some things are more important than an audience, I completely understand, but if you don't learn the difference between those, and the ones that don't, you could be doomed to never get any better.