“But I’m not a writer.”

That’s probably the Hail Mary excuse you’ll throw as you feel yourself being nudged to try blogging.

It doesn’t matter.

It. Doesn’t. Matter.

No two people are the same, so no two people are going to have the same approach to typing out some thoughts. That’s one of the beauties of the blog world – the diversity of the people you meet and the many ways they write.

But I bet that Hail Mary of “I’m not a writer” isn’t really you digging your heels in, I’ll bet it’s just resistance. I’m guessing it’s your way of trying to ask the question: “How do I write?”

For a personal blog, I think the best practical advice is this: open up a new post and write like you’re writing an email to your best friend.

If you can train your mind to think that way for a few minutes, what you’ll see is that you have a more relaxed and conversational feel to what you’re communicating than you would if you went into it with the mindset that you need to write a term paper about the new corn muffin recipe you found. Leave the formality to the lawyers. Sorry, Dad.

The other style you could try is lists. Open up a new post, write a sentence to let us know where you’re going with the post and then spew your thoughts into the bulleted list. If I don’t have time (or just don’t feel like trying) to organize my thoughts into some kind of narrative, I just make a list of what’s on my mind.

Whether you think you do or not, you already have a writing style. You have wit or drama or encouragement or story built in to you. Just go back and look at the last few month’s worth of your Facebook status updates. Or look in the “sent messages” folder of your email and read the messages that you send to the people closest to you. You’ll see your most natural writing style emerging.

There’s a few pointers on how to write. If you’re still struggling with what to write, refer back to Getting Started: I don’t have anything to say. Or leave me a comment or email me. I’ll help any way I can.