Blog Your Heart Out: An Inside Peak at My Personal Editorial Calendar

Published: Tue, 02/24/15

Dear ,

How is your editorial calendar coming?

I was thinking about you today, and wondering if it was stressing you out. Or if you were simply pretending it didn't exist. Or some other form of resistance was occurring.

Some folks really take to the editorial calendar like a fish to water. Others find it more difficult. If that's you, don't worry.

Sometimes what you have to do is really make it your own. When I first started working with an editorial calendar, I downloaded, bought, stole, and otherwise procured many different templates and prototypes. I kept thinking that I needed to find the perfect one in order to make it work for me.

It turned out, that what I needed wasn't to find the perfect editorial calendar, but manifest the perfect editorial calendar for me. I needed to turn it into an act of creation. The ironic thing is, that when I finally did turn it into an act of creation and made it my own, what turned out to be perfect for me was far more chaotic, messy, and wild-looking then all of the beautiful templates I been so obsessed with.

In fact, my perfect editorial calendar looks like this:

So, my message for you today is to make this process your own, so that it's absolutely perfect for you and nobody else.

If part of find that perfect version for you is to implement templates and done-for-you materials -- some of us are totally in love with them -- I have some happy ideas for you.

The first thing is a bit of good news, both for people who love templates and for people who are feeling behind in the Challenge: at the end of this week I will be releasing a workbook for the Blog Your Heart Out Challenge, which will include all of the exercises we've done and new, expanded material -- plus plenty of bonuses like audio recordings of the exercises we've discussed and a couple of surprises or two.

One of the done-for-you materials included will be a couple of templates for editorial calendars that my clients have loved.

Also if you take a look at this Pinterest board, there are some downloadable editorial calendars you can take a peek at. It could be that one of them is the perfect thing for you, or you may get inspired to create something even more perfect for you by looking at them.

I also want to make sure you see this editorial calendar that I think is amazing for those who want to make blogging an every day (or every other day kind) of thing. I'm not an affiliate for these folks-- in fact, I doubt they know that I exist, other than as a purchases of last year's calendar. But for people who do want to make a serious daily commitment to blogging, this is a great asset.

P.S. One more bonus tip for you for today: I wrote this blog entry using the voice recognition function on my iPhone and Evernote, as I was driving home from an appointment with my midwife. My appointment ran late, and I was very worried that I would run out of time to write to you today -- until I remembered this sweet, simple, amazing trick! Sometimes, technology can make your writing life really, really, doable -- like if you're running from thing to thing, and you use a dictation app on your phone to make the time you need. What you are reading right now is evidence that it works.