Writing For Yourself

You know what’s funny? (This kind of introduction works much better in person when you are actually talking to someone – I’ll have to assume you would say “No, what?”).

It’s funny how much more difficult it is writing for yourself rather than for a client or employer.

I’ve been looking at my website for the past week trying to decide what I need to write, what pages are required, what kind of “news”/”blog”/”rant” section I want to include and so on.

Not only am I trying to decide on these factors, but I’m also trying to work out the best on-site SEO strategy to go along with it. I.e. what pages do I want to rank for what keywords, what should the title be, what should the H1 tag be, etc, etc.

Now, if I were working for someone then it wouldn’t be a problem. They would say, “we need this, we want you to do that here and then finish off by writing this.”

To which I would reply, “no worries, I’ll have it done by the end of the week/month/year”.

The problem I’m finding when writing for myself is that I don’t have a character to play. When I’m at work, or when I’m working for a client, I am that company’s voice. That makes it easier to create the content.

With this site I don’t feel as though I have a mask to hide behind and therefore feel more on show than when I write for others.

I suppose that the main thing I need to do is not think about this site as me, but more James Harding – Freelance Writer.

Hopefully once I get into this mindset the words will flow in the way that I know they can.