I wrote 4 blog posts yesterday. I don't know why but I just couldn't stop writing down ideas that came my way. I was afraid of forgetting them.
All of the posts were connected with something I did, saw or heard during the day that in some way was related to the organ world. Most of my blogging students struggle to find ideas what to write about and my recommendation is always to try to stop and notice what you are doing, seeing or hearing. Basically train yourself to notice what you notice. Then sooner or later ideas will come to you. Like this time I was having a lesson with a student about his organ compositions. I noticed what his biggest struggle was and wrote about that. Another post I wrote was about my organ demonstration for 6th graders of our school. I thought about what was fascinating to them and wrote about that. This next post came into existence when one student came to me for help about his hymn sight-reading challenge. This was frustrating to him and I wrote about that. Not all of the posts I write are published right away. I publish just one a day but schedule the rest to go out in the future automatically on Weebly. I also use this RSS to EMAIL campaign feature on Mailchimp so that it grabs the latest published post for me and sends to my email subscribers also automatically without me lifting a finger. By the way, always become your first subscriber to check if things are going smoothly with your email delivery, if you like the formatting etc. Can you see yourself doing this too? Can you go about your daily organ or music related activities and notice some things that are frustrating or inspiring to you or others? Then imagine sitting down with your good friend while you both are having a cup of cappuccino and you chat about these frustrations or inspirations. Write like you talk. Use conversational style. Nobody is going to read dry academic writing anymore. That's all you need to do when you write a blog post. Well, not all but it's a great start. Right now, I'm imagining my good friend John from Australia having a cup of cappuccino. He's an engineer by profession but finds himself having to play the organ at church more often these days. I believe blogging would be great for him too. It would expand his credibility, build authority and trust in the organ world. Yes, he's an engineer but he is a very active organist too. By the way, he could write a blog for engineers. The ideas and the power of blogging are still the same. So right now I'm basically sharing my experiences to him in my mind on how I come up with the ideas to write in my blog. Can you do that today? At the end of your day, can you write down one or 10 things that you did, saw or heard that were frustrating or inspiring to you or others in the organ or musical world on your notebook? Yesterday my 6 things were: 1. Teaching 7th graders ear training 2. Organ demonstration for 6th graders 3. Teaching 8th graders ear training 4. Teaching another group of 8th graders ear training 5. Playing at the honorary doctor ceremony at the Vilnius University 6. Teaching Unda Maris organ studio You don't have to write about all of them. Just about one thing on your list that seems vivid. Let me know if you need help with anything or feel stuck.
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