Podcast Ep 12: Blogging When You Don’t Like Writing [and Have a Chronic Illness!]

Let’s say a part of living your life purpose meant you had to do something you didn’t like doing? That’s what happened to me – I really hate writing, but blogging was going to be very important for me. In today’s podcast I speak about the techniques I use to help me around this problem. Listen here… 

…but if you can’t have a listen, then you can read what I’ve said too:

Blogging When You Don’t Like Writing [and Have a Chronic Illness!]

“Hi I’m Shruti and this is my podcast space where I speak about life lessons, chronic conditions, mental and physical health tips and experiences.

Now during Episode 6, I spoke about how to find life purpose and I also mentioned how I discovered mine… today I want to share the next challenge I faced when I tried to walk my path of purpose…
So a quick recap of what I said in the earlier podcast,.. my purpose was found through a lot of trial and error but it was towards the end of 2019 that I realised that my purpose is to share everything I know about the chronic conditions I deal with but mainly focussed on endometriosis since I knew more about that.

After looking at the various options I had to pushing this purpose, I believed – along with some nudging and loads of encouragement from my friend Suneer Chowdhary, who also manages multiple sports blogs [like TennisWorldLive.com] that blogging looked like the best option for me.

Google loves words and written content still holds value in the ever growing world of video content. Plus I felt I wasn’t at the stage where I could give YouTube another go considering I have attempted it 2-3 times before and I needed time to heal post surgery so creating videos was going to be tough on me.

But, with blogging, there was a major issue… I don’t like writing.

And that’s all that blogging is about, well other than research and promoting it everywhere… blogging is purely based on writing valuable content.

But again… I’ll say this more truthfully – I HATE writing – it’s no exaggeration, I really do! Even in school, I’d have the shortest essays and my English teacher would write in brackets “expand this point” and “add a quote here” – then she’d give it back to me… then I’d improve it to a length that she’d be happy with.

Today, on last count, almost 5 months on from starting my website called allthingsendometriosis.com, I have written over 55 well thought out articles…. with an average word count of 1700.

Which I am proud of yes, but more so I am extremely shocked that I’ve managed this… but how… How does someone who doesn’t like writing – correction – how does someone who hates writing and has chronic conditions to manage, end up doing this?!

If like me, you don’t like writing, I feel I can part with my 2 cents of advice which may help.

The first, pick a subject you like and have prior knowledge about:

You honestly don’t want to work on a topic that you’ll have to research from scratch on – especially for your first blog.

You’ll always have a mental head-start if you know what you’re talking about because it gives you confidence to know which thoughts and concepts to share on your site and if within that, you need more knowledge to complete an article then you know what you’re looking for while researching.

So for me I found it easy to breakdown information that I’ve known about endometriosis… I began by listing all the ideas I have on the topic, for example, cost of endometriosis surgery, endometriosis diet, pain management, how to prepare for surgery, what to do after surgery… I think you get what I mean… but the point here was I had experienced all of the things I was talking about before I even got into delving into other areas I knew of but wasn’t so well-versed with.

Eventually, writing about what I knew gave me enough confidence to now write about topics that require more research than usual.

But again, I hate writing, so how did I get over that?

Well, overall, I haven’t gotten over the dislike I have for writing, but I have developed a process that has made it easier for me… and that process takes me to my second point…

Mini Targets Help Focus…

Okay it’s not as simple as that… yes focus is needed, but focus on what and what targets??…

After deciding the article topic, I break the topic down into multiple points which could serve as different sections or headings of that article.

Then, I focus on one heading or one section at a time, writing bullet points for each…

Now comes the actual writing part – I tell myself that I need to write just one paragraph for the first section and that’s it… usually after getting through the first paragraph I gain some confidence to write the second paragraph focussing only on the sentence I’m writing.

I never look at the whole article or push myself to complete it in one go or sit on it for hours on end, instead, by giving myself targets of one paragraph at a time I manage to get the whole article done without realising it.

I never overwhelm myself with the writing ahead, but yes, if someone had given me a target of 50 articles to complete in 4 months I probably would’ve laughed at the idea.

I would have struggled and would’ve been so annoyed that I’m forcing myself to do something I hate – a feeling that would have the potential to throw me into a mental slump which isn’t a great thing whether you’re facing a chronic illness or not, plus I believe whether you have a health issue or not, you must experience a sense of satisfaction in at least the main processes of your work and in most things you do.

By not giving myself lofty targets considering my dislike for writing and my health constraints and by focusing on one paragraph and one line at a time, I’ve managed the 55 articles.
So to recap, my two cents on blogging when you don’t like writing and you have a chronic illness you…

– Choose a topic to blog on that interests you and maybe you’ve experienced.

Next is, you…

– Work on one sentence and one paragraph at a time – don’t focus on the bigger picture, because that’s developing as you write each word any way.

And lastly… enjoy what you do, take breaks, don’t forget to do what you need to for your health, read about your topic, be better informed and somedays, just brainstorm topic ideas rather than wondering what next.

O’ one final tip before I sign off…

Everything you do, whether it’s researching your subject, talking to people related to your subject, creating feature images and promoting your content – it’s all part of building your blog – writing IS the main thing because if you don’t have a well thought-out written piece, what will you promote?!

But the idea is to use moments where you don’t feel like writing, or can’t write in case you’re having a bad pain day to read up or promote – break up your day so that writing doesn’t feel like a burden.

That’s it people – quite a different podcast to my usual ones, but I’m glad that I shared something that explains how I’ve taken forward my discovery of my life purpose in these five months despite it not coming naturally to me.

As always, thank you for listening and if you would like to share your thoughts then please get in touch with me through Instagram – my Instagram is @footprintsnoboundaries or through email, which is [email protected].

b-bye!!”

Read Here For:

• Podcast Ep. 6: What Do I Do With My Life? What’s My Purpose?
• How To Work From Home if You Have a Chronic Illness
• My Diet for Endometriosis & Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome

I’d love to know what you thought of today’s podcast. Please do share your thoughts in the comments section below…

Previous: Podcast Episode 11 – Manipulation. Manipulator. Manipulated.

Up Next: Podcast Episode 13 – The Art of Getting Angry

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Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional. I am a patient and have created this platform to share my experiences. This is all purely informative and in no way am I providing medical advice. Please consult a medical professional.