Do you find yourself writing pages-long texts to your friends on a regular basis?

Do you always seem to have an opinion, thought, or idea that just won’t leave you alone until you get it out of your brain and onto paper?

Did you grow up writing Facebook posts longer than some academic essays and receiving comments from people to “just write a book already?”

If any of these ring true for you, you’ve probably Googled “how to start a blog” at least once. Even if you don’t identify with any of these statements, the writing itch is common to many and manifests itself in any number of ways. Starting a blog is one of the easiest, cost-effective ways of getting your own unique thoughts and views out into the world (in a more serious vein than most social media).

If you have done a Google search on how to start a blog, you probably had more than a healthy dose of information overload. When I typed that into my search bar 30 seconds ago, I got 6,290,000,000 results. Granted, that number really doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things but it sounds big and impressive so we’re sticking with it (yay, numbers). The point is that there’s a lot.

If you spend even a cursory amount of time perusing the various websites, articles, videos, and podcasts that are out there, you will soon discover that everybody in the universe has their own opinion on The Right Way to do things. This factor (the variety and sheer number of opinions) can tend to be overwhelming when you’re just starting out. Thankfully, though, there are a few generally agreed-upon factors.

Typically, you’d need a website or some other means of taking up digital real estate. There are many ways of doing even this, but you’ve got to have a place to house all your fresh and exciting thoughts and ideas.

You’d also need to have some exciting thoughts and ideas that you want to put out in the world for others to read, digest, and potentially allow to influence their thoughts and actions. Or at least the desire to articulate your thoughts and ideas, whether or not they’re exciting or fresh (that’s for the people to decide, I guess).

Lastly, something that is largely agreed-upon in successful blogging circles is the power of narrowing down your focus so that your content is largely centered on one or two main topics or themes (i.e. travel, baking, wearing kilts in America, puppies, etc.). This is so that you can establish yourself as an expert in whatever category you plug yourself into, as opposed to someone who just writes about whatever pops into their mind at a given moment.

This works really well for some people who inherently know that they want to devote their entire life to writing content directly aimed towards the middle-aged jewelry maker looking for new inspiration. Some people just know what they know.  

This leaves me in a conflicting position because I’m both of those people at the same exact time—I both understand the need for specificity and also detest the idea of being constrained to just writing about one topic for the rest of my entire life. Plus, what if I pick the wrong topic now and then three months down the road I discover that I don’t actually like writing about the cultural traditions of the indigenous people groups of Northern Siberia?

However, that’s the whole issue. It’s not picking something for the rest of your entire life. I mean, it can be. But it doesn’t have to be. This isn’t college, after all.

I’ve wanted to write for a long time. Pretty much my whole life. All of the statements in the beginning of this post are taken from my own experiences. But I’ve never really had any one particular thing I’ve wanted to write about—it’s always just looked like writing about whatever seems significant at the time (which is apparently exactly what you’re not supposed to do).

Thus, I’m left in a quandary. If I want people to actually discover, read, and benefit from my writing, I’ve got to specialize, hone in on what I’m doing. But how else am I going to discover what I want others to discover if not through the very act of writing?

So where does this leave me (and anybody else who loves writing and has ideas, but doesn’t know how to pare it down to a succinct one-liner that wraps up everything in a cute little package)? Personally, I plan on using the rest of this 30-day writing challenge to explore some of those areas I’m passionate about. Not only that, but also to branch out into areas that I don’t think I’m passionate about right now. Get a little stretched, do a little digging.

I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with experimenting as a means of discovering what you’re actually passionate about and good at. So, if you’re following along with this Month Of Writing A Lot, please be aware that you’re in for some varied thoughts. Varied, but intentional.

I challenge you to do the same, wherever you’re at in your writing (or pre-writing) journey.