J. Michael Straczynski is one of the most prolific writers today, writing 10 hours a day, six days a week (according to his promotional material). With that kind of dedication, surely writing always comes easily and naturally to him, right?

Well, no. Like the rest of us, he has his days where things just don’t seem to gel. As he was working on his Babylon 5 TV series, he kept in touch with fans via online chat rooms (this was in the 90s), and provided some insights into his writing process. Good episodes, he said, almost seemed to write themselves; all he had to do was allow the words to flow out of him. Not-so-good episodes, on the other hand, often took days of agonizing and rewriting, and he could tell during the process that they weren’t going to turn out very well. Sure enough, those episodes always seemed to be the least popular with fans.

It turns out that this applies to writing for the Web, as well. As we’ve been maintaining this blog throughout the last several months, we’ve had posts that seemed to write themselves, and posts that took a great deal of effort. Almost universally, the easy-to-write posts came out the best, while the difficult posts have been lacking that certain something.

You’ll find this too, if you maintain a blog for your business and adhere to a publishing schedule.

Take a moment to reflect on the last several posts you’ve written. On the whole, have they been easy to write, or difficult? If they’ve been difficult, how pleased are you with the way they turned out in the end?

If they’ve been easy to write and you’re satisfied with the results, that’s great! You might be a natural born writer. If the reverse is true, you have some options to consider:

1. Continue writing the way you always have, resigned to the difficulty and tedium
2. Evaluate if someone else in your company is better suited to maintain your blog
3. Consider outsourcing your blog posts

By the way, if you’re struggling to write posts, and your posts aren’t very good, they’re not going to do much for your traffic or conversions.

A good copy writer will be able to chat with you for an hour or two and come away with fodder for several posts to be written on your behalf. No more bashing your head against the keyboard, hoping a good post will materialize! Consider it an investment, not an expense, and free yourself to do things that are the highest and best use of your time instead.

Photo Credit: mpclemens via Compfight cc