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Writing a Blog to Help Your Writing

How to Become a Better Writer Through Blogging: Five Tips

1. If you clicked on the link above, you already know the first way in which blogging can help your writing. It keeps your writing muscle exercised, which is very important whether you are a web writer or a novelist, beginner or an established writer. Good writing skills are basic, and blogging helps you keep them sharp.

2. The second, often overlooked way blogging helps writers (especially fiction writers), is when they browse the blogosphere, which is a hotbed of ideas just waiting to be harvested.

Someone has a bad day and rants about it, another is depressed and gets drunk and ends up in bed with a perfect stranger, someone wants to bake brownies but they bounce off the oven……all these personal confessions can be picked up, distilled and assimilated in a fiction writer’s mind and find its way out in his or her work. Fresh, original, and completely unrecognizable from the blogs it was inspired from.

While browsing, you can check out those blog gems out there as well which provide useful information for writers: great for inspiration and advice. Or how about reading up on the journal of a writer just like you? You are sure to learn a lot!

3. The third way a blog or an author website is a must for a writer is because it gives you someplace to showcase your work, and apparently literary agents think it is important you have a blog or an author’s website; whether you are an established, published author, or a rank beginner.

A blog could actually help your writing career, because an agent or editor you have queried might just want to look you up on the internet before taking things further. A professional- looking blog or author’s website can sometimes be your ticket to eventual publication.

On the other hand, a blog by an established writer like Neil Gaiman, for instance, can provide wonderful insight into the writer’s thought processes and win over new fans. A published author could also consider blogs and blog tours as marketing tools.

4. If you post your writings on your blog, it could be a way for you to get feedback and criticism. Your readers may leave you comments, and that can only help you improve your writing.

What is more, the posts which get the most comments, or attract the biggest number of hits can be your metric for judging what kind of writing would be more popular.

5. A blog becomes an online networking tool. If you are a writer who contributes to writer’s forums with links to your blog, read and comment regularly on the blogs of editors, agents and fellow writers, you can slowly build up a presence in the writing community.

If you are a writer, blogging definitely is the way to go.

This picture from concurringopinions.com says it all, as far as I am concerned:


But before you rush off to start your own blog, or even if you have recently started one, Arachne Jericho has some great blogging advice for writers that you might like to thumb through. ( Some of this advice could come in handy even if you are looking for freelance blogging gigs).

If you need some tips on Blog writing, check here for some sound advice.

And for those with apprehensions, here is some encouragement from the Fragmentist.

From here on out, here’s to all the writers, would-be writers, and all those with the writer in you: Happy Blogging!

Damyanti Biswas

Damyanti Biswas is the author of You Beneath Your Skin and numerous short stories that have been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, the UK, and Asia. She has been shortlisted for Best Small Fictions and Bath Novel Awards and is co-editor of the Forge Literary Magazine. Her literary crime thriller series, the Blue Mumbai, is represented by Lucienne Diver from The Knight Agency. Both The Blue Bar and The Blue Monsoon were published in 2023.

I appreciate comments, and I always visit back. If you're having trouble commenting, let me know via the contact form, or tweet me up @damyantig !

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16 Comments

  • katy gilmore says:

    Damyanti, I couldn't quite decide where to leave a comment to say thank you for visiting and following my blog – I've been lost in your "content" and thoroughly enjoying myself. Finally I'm commenting here because I like what you say – blogging makes for such a good writing discipline. Thanks!

  • dilipnaidu says:

    Nice post. Yes writing does open the mind – thus thoughts flow out.
    Cheers 🙂

  • Brice says:

    Great article! I was in the same boat and started my own blog on blogging. Even though I’m definately more of a creative writer then an essay/article writer, my blog writing has helped all areas of my writing. Good article and keep up the good work!

    Brice
    http://blogging-4beginners.blogspot.com

  • GiveIndia says:

    Hi there,

    This post is so TRUE because as I’ve recently discovered, blogging does make you think hard about what you’re going to write. I’m blogging for the NGO I work with and I set myself a goal of three posts a week. So far, so good but it’s not easy.

    Funnily enough, since I started blogging for work, I get so many ideas about other things I’d like to write about like food and travel. I’ve written in the past for different publications and now that urge is coming back.

  • Damyanti says:

    Thanks for dropping by Natalie, and for linking me over at your blog. I have been meaning to add your link on mine as well, but have been lazy and left it on delicious.

    If you don’t mind, I will link you to my other “daily” blog, where the topics are more lifestyle relevant rather than for the writing niche.

  • I cannot agree more. You make several good points about blogging.

    I have the career I do today because of my blog. It started as a passion, became an obsession (!) and now is the cornerstone of my multi-faceted business.

    I am still surprised at how many writers (especially freelancers) don’t have blogs!

    Keep up the great tips on your blog. It is a wonderful resource. I’ll add a link in my “Sipsters around the world” section.

    xo natalie

  • Damyanti says:

    Peterson,
    This blog is all about writers and writing, so pontificate away:)

  • Damyanti says:

    Rikkitikkitavi,
    It is nice to know that you like my blog.

    Yes, it is always the spirit that counts and the spirit of easter is full of blessings nd good wishes:)

  • Peterson says:

    This site seems a well for positive writer’s energy. I admire those who work on the craft of writing for the rewards of expressing an idea or sharing a thought that brings about positive emotions that stick with the reader.

    I am a first time author of a book called Getty’s Work. I put my thoughts on the line with the book. In a nutshell it is a book about performance and the pursuit of our best. I work topics like being in the moment, vision aligned with passion, what type of feedback inspires another, recognition, trust, and relationships.

    Writing this book and those in the future requires my passion. I firmly believe that when your passion aligns with a vision which when worked enables positive things to happen to those around you this is peak performance.

    Thanks for allowing me to pontificate about a subject dear to me. 🙂

  • good advice here, thanks, i’m passing it on. I guess it isn’t easter there anymore and don’t know if you celebrate it but happy easter, just the same. it is the thought that counts, yes?

  • Damyanti says:

    Joshua, you got to the heart of the matter straightaway:)

  • Damyanti says:

    Amy, you are welcome, you have wonderful site:)

  • Damyanti says:

    Eamon, yes, blogging is a great outlet for a writer which was not available before the advent of the internet. The writing community should take as much advantage of it as possible!

  • Joshua says:

    Great tips! Blogging is a wonderful way to let one’s true self come through. The high degree of refined professionalism is not a must for beginning bloggers. The benefit definitely comes from writing, writing, and more writing… which is how one refines oneself anyway.

  • AmyM says:

    Thanks for linking to my site!

  • eamon.mack says:

    I certainly agree that it’s a great way to exercise your writing muscles. And it’s great to have something that you’re not dependent on a publisher or agent for.