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As promised, I sometimes just cover random blogging thoughts here. Like things I stumble on when working, reading, or - most of the times - when relaxing. So today I realized that the most self-destructing thing you can do as a blogger is writing when don’t feel like it. Here’s why.

Let’s start with one hell of a cliché: blogging is about passion. Sorry, you may have heard that a hundred times now, yet - as always with clichés - it IS true. You might blog for the money as well, but it doesn’t lead anywhere if that’s the only reason. Blogging takes too much effort to make it a logical way of earning money.

So you blog because you love it. Yet after a while, especially when your blog becomes popular, you might start to feel some pressure as well. Readers want updates, you don’t want your number of RSS readers to decline, and you might let down your co-editors. Well.., screw that.

Why? Take a moment and think about the baddest posts you’ve ever written. Got some? Alright.., now go back to the moments you were writing those low-quality posts. Back then, you were probably blogging to fill up space or meet an (imaginary) deadline. Right?

My advice would be to just walk away from the screen when you don’t feel like blogging. Otherwise you’ll become frustrated every time you feel obliged to blog. So long for the passion! Just take my advice, read a book, have a beer with friends, take a walk with your lover, listen to your favorite band and come back to that screen when you’re inspired.

Oh and when you’re inspired, write more than you need to. So by the time you have to fill up some space, you always have a secret stack.

As a blogger you have to read a lot, scan hundreds of short articles and write up your thoughts immediately. So there’s hardly any time left to really think about the bigger picture. Is this making us superficial?

Today I didn’t feel that good and was too tired to do some serious Web 2.0 reporting for The Next Web. On a normal Sunday - after an easy start - I read my feeds, empty my inbox and write a couple of stories. Today I only wrote one about my upcoming trip to San Fransisco. When I sensed this was going to be it for today, I decided to read the articles I had saved on Instapaper.

So I’ve read some really interesting stories. Like The Zen of Blogging by Hunter Nuttall and People power transforms the web in next online revolution by Charles Leadbeater. I also turned a few pages of Everything bad is good for you, an eye-opening book by Steven Berlin Johnson, a guy I really admire for his work.

All this captivating stuff got me thinking, and not just about the content. The thorough analysis and deep thoughts of the writers made me wonder if I wasn’t getting a bit too superficial. Since I was only trying to keep up with the fast pace of the technology industry and hardly saved any time for slower thinking. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyday I highlight an article worth reading for bloggers and web-savvies, have look at the archive here

Gapingvoid lands a book deal…

It’s been twenty years when Hugh McLeod started drawing his “squiggly” cartoons and a decade when he decided to draw them on the back of business cards. It was the consequence of a “creative bug” he had. For him, this bug led to a lot of great work and experiences, yet this isn’t a guarantee that it will turn out successfully for everyone. After all, it IS a bug. So in 2004 he decided to write a piece called ‘How to be creative‘:

All I was thinking about was a short, practical, real-world list of advice that would come in handy to somebody say, 10-20 years younger than me, somebody with the same “creative bug” I had when I was just starting out in the world. I was just trying pass along some valuable, pain-saving lessons to the next generation that I had learned along the way. No more, no less.

This list - full of eye-openers - has been download a million times now and inspired tons of people, including me. Especially his remark that creative people should have a “sexy” and a “cash” job helped me a lot. Some work you do is just for the sake of paying the bills, the other is for fun - it’s your creative outlet. When I build a blog for a company, I just do it to pay for my groceries. When I write a post on The Next Web or this blog, I do it because I love it. McLeod:

As soon as you accept this, I mean really accept this, for some reason your career starts moving ahead faster. I don’t know why this happens. It’s the people who refuse to cleave their lives this way- who just want to start Day One by quitting their current crappy day job and moving straight on over to best-selling author… Well, they never make it.

McLeod now landed a book deal, which makes absolute sense. When I had read his article, I passed it on to everybody who has the same “creative bug”. They all loved it. So it’s absolutely worth a hard cover. The blogger annex cartoonist now lives in South Texas to focus on his writings. How romantic does that sound? His book will probably be released in the beginning of 2009, and just as Mr. Gapingvoid himself, I can’t wait.

• Read the article on www.gapingvoid.com

Today I talked about my inspiration for blogging on the Spin Awards Inspiration Days. I wanted to give the audience something to think about, instead of just give them an insight in my blogging mind. So I made a comparison between LSD and the Internet.

I came up with that comparison when I visited the exhibition Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era in The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. It showed what the hippies were all about: their ideas about sexual revolution, equal rights and anti-war attitude were revolutionary back then. Yet because they fought so hard for it, we consider them normal now.

The hippies were partly inspired by LSD: the greatest musicians used it for their songs, gonzo journalists like Hunter S. Thompson wrote about the trips he had and Timothy Leary researched the effects. The last one called upon everybody to turn on, tune in and drop out: explore several states of consciousness, join the movement and say goodbye to the materialistic society.

Leary, who had received a master’s degree at Washington State University in 1946, and a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1950, started a LSD promotion tour. He inspired many men and women to take a different view on modern-day society. Unfortunately he lost his job as lecturer in psychology at Harvard and eventually ended up in jail for a while. For many people though, he’s a still an enlightened hero.

For some reason I experience a weird nostalgic feeling about this summer of love. It doesn’t make sense though, since it all took place 19 years before I was born. I think I just love the idea of fighting for new values and opinions. Yet I won’t put my hands on LSD and the summer of love is only experienced by toothless hobo’s. So how can I experience the feeling of this time? Read the rest of this entry »

There it is, yet another blog! Number 3 for me, yet this will be a completely different story than The Next Web and Spotlight Effect. This is the place where I can write whatever I want, whenever I want. But to keep it interesting for a large crowd, I’ll also post blog tips regularly. You can expect the following types of posts:

• How to-posts. Yeah I’ll do the ‘how to’ thing as well. Not to make it to the Digg frontpage though, but to exchange my knowledge about blogging and managing your online identity.
• Culture. Whenever I’ve visited a movie, play or concert I’ll share my experiences here.
• Backgrounds. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to interview some big shot. In January for example, I interviewed Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. You can read the result on The Next Web. I think it will be fun and interesting to from now on write about how the interview went, where we met and how nasty the PR lady was.
• Anything cool I stumble upon on the web, streets and the crazy yet awesome office I work

Some personal blogs I really like are written by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Seth Godin, Polle de Maagt, Erwin Blom and Jaap Stronks (Most of them are Dutch). They’ve inspired me and I will give that inspiration my own twist, hoping that this ‘just another Wordpress blog’ will be interesting for you!