 You're a rock star blogger, aren't you? And you're a rock star? You publish every day. You never run out of ideas. You work your full-time job. You exercise daily. And you still post exciting content every day on your blog, right? Right? Yeah, me neither. Days go by and then weeks. You think about how good posting would feel to write, to publish, to get those likes and comments. But you don't actually do anything. The longer your blog sits there, the more you feel like your next post has to be awesome to make up for being a slacker. Which, of course, means you now have writer's block because, really, I mean, who can write under the pressure of having to write something amazing? So you don't post. Your visitors leave. Your views trickle to zero. And you feel like a terrible blogger and you go cry in a corner. It doesn't have to be this way. I found a way that you can make room in your life for your blog, and also a way to have something to write about every time you put your fingers to the keyboard. My name is Andrea Badgley, and I've been blogging for four years on my personal site at andriabadgley.com. When I first started blogging, I was a stay-at-home mom. And I published multiple times a week. I had a healthy online following, and I was making more friends every day. But when I started working full-time, I didn't have time or focus for my blog anymore. I stopped posting, and my visitors left, and my views dried up. And I felt bad about myself for abandoning the blog that I had grown to love, and that also helped me find my career path with WordPress.com. So I tried to figure out what was keeping me from writing. And I determined that I had two blockers, time and topics. During my blogging drought, I'd think, I just don't have time anymore to write. Or if I made time, I'd sit down and think, I don't have anything interesting to say. So I figured out a way to make time, and I devised a tool that ensured I would never run out of topics. So first, let's talk about time. I was once a member of a group who met weekly to write together, and we'd often do what's called a free write. We would set a timer for 10 minutes. We'd write without lifting our pens from the page, and when the timer dinged, we'd stop writing, and we'd share what we wrote. To make room in my life for blogging, I decided to iterate on this idea of the free write and carve 10 minutes out of my day every day to write. 10 minutes is so little. It can be done after an early morning workout when a run has gotten your creative juices flowing, or you can do it on your lunch break, or you can do it with a cocktail, or you can do it in bed at night when you realize, oh crap, I haven't written yet today. The main thing to remember is that 10 minutes is short enough that you can squeeze it in anywhere. To really make this work, though, here's a pro tip. Create a trigger. Carve a time out of the day, a specific time, that you want to write. Set yourself an alarm to remind yourself, and then give yourself a reward for following through, whether that's the piece of an early morning house before your kids wake up, or whether it's an afternoon cup of coffee to go with your writing time. By pairing a cue, like an alarm, with a reward, like coffee, you'll be able to make a habit of writing every day. So the 10 minute write takes care of the time issue. But what about topics? Again, I'm gonna turn to a writing group strategy. When I worked with my writing group, we'd always put a box filled with folded slips of paper on the middle of the table. Whenever we started a free write, one of us would pull a slip of paper from the box, and we'd read the words written on it aloud. We'd then write about whatever was written on the piece of paper for 10 minutes. This same strategy can be used for blogging. To create your own prompt box, just take a slip of paper and snip it into 30 little pieces. On each piece, write a word or a phrase that has meaning for you. Examples of summer mine are thunderstorms, rolling pins, salt marshes. If you work right for a blogging site, I mean a business site, you could write down employee names or materials that your business uses or anything about your business that is unique. Once you've written down your prompts, fold those slips of paper and put them in a box. Then any time that you wanna write, if you can't think of what to write about, you can just pull one of your prompts from the box and start writing. To overcome writer's block and start publishing again, pair the 10 minute write with the prompt box. So during the time that you've carved out for your writing time, just grab your box and your timer. Pull a prompt from your box, set your timer, write for 10 minutes, and when the timer stops, stop writing. And that's it. I have a feeling that some of you may be skeptical. What about editing, right? That was my big thing, because I don't wanna put a bunch of junk out there. During the month of April of this year, I dedicated to publishing a 10 minute free write on my blog every day for 30 days. Each morning beginning March 31st, I poured myself a cup of coffee before my work day started, set my timer, pulled a prompt, and wrote for 10 minutes. When the timer dinged, I did a quick scan for spelling and punctuation errors, and then I scheduled my post to publish the following morning. The scheduling delay gave me a little bit of extra time to edit if I wanted to, but to be honest, I rarely did. And the reason that I didn't was that I came to live by the motto, perfect is the enemy of done. Publishing this way is really liberating. Some of your posts will bomb, but then some of them really take off. It's like shooting 100 frames to get the perfect photograph. Every shot that you take is not gonna be brilliant, but with each click of the shutter, you're improving so that when a prime moment arrives, because you've been practicing and because you're ready, you'll capture it beautifully. So by pairing the prompt box with the timer, I was able to publish every day in the month of April. My blog got really active again. Visitors climbed 26% and my views climbed 45% from 3,700 in March to 50 or 400 views in April. Visitors really loved the spontaneity of it, and in fact, they started sending me prompts. And whenever I wrote from a reader's prompt, I would give them credit and link back to their site, helping build community. By giving yourself meaningful topics to write about and by carving time out of your day to write, you not only get practicing again, you get publishing again. As soon as you start publishing, that writer's block wall starts to come down. As soon as you start doing your 10 minute free writes, pulling a prompt, setting a timer, and just writing without worrying about what you're writing about. Getting started is the hardest part. So how do you get started? Go home and create a prompt box. Make a list of 20 things that you love, moss, mountains, bacon, brioche, martinis. You can start here at WordCamp. If you are at a talk that sparks an idea, jot down a note so that you can write about it later. Whenever you're out in the world, whether you're eavesdropping in a coffee shop or watching an acorn roll across the sidewalk, make notes of scenes or objects that strike you and take them home with you. Put the mementos in your prompt box and then the next time it's time to write, you can write. For more tips on publishing in 10 minutes a day, I posted this talk on my blog at AndreaBadgley.com or tweet me at AndreaBadgley and if you have any questions or just wanna chat about it, I'd love to chat. Thanks.