Write about something you think others want to hear. Each person has a unique perspective, and that is what blogging gives us the opportunity to share. What is it like to be a self-employed person dealing with our healthcare system? What’s it like to be a specialist in a hospital system? You are the only one who sees the world from your perspective, and showing others what it looks like from your vantage point can help them understand the whole better. It’s much easier to be passionate from your own perspective.

Read others’ blogs. One thing that has fueled this dry spell for me is that I have stopped reading what others write. This makes me sink into my own perspective and not speak as one adding to a whole. I start to see the world from my own little corner and that makes my writing more repetitious and less relevant.

Keep writing. Writing is a muscle that needs to be used. If you are not putting your thoughts and opinions into words that connect with readers, you will stop being able to do so. I have the blessing of being able to write for multiple sources, so I have some means of keeping my writing going. Still, it is hard to sit down and write for the blog again when I haven’t done so for a couple of weeks.

Understand the big picture. Dry periods happen, and so do very productive times. Yet the dry periods are not always nonproductive. I really think that hitting the restart button and writing with a clean RAM is useful. It may take time to reboot the ol’ writing style, but writing is a long-term thing, so people will wait.

Don’t force it. I have about 10 half-written posts I have done over the past month. All of them felt forced, so they didn’t get published. You have to be yourself when you write, and it’s better to take a break than to become something you aren’t. Blogging is about being who you are – it’s journalism done by the people in the trenches. If I have to sound like someone else to get something written, then I should take a break.