In WWI and WWII in the US, United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany, private citizens were asked to plant vegetable, fruit, and herb gardens on their own land or in public parks to take pressure off national food supplies. These Victory Gardens were also meant to boost morale, giving citizens a way to do something positive for themselves and the war effort. A few of those gardens are still active today.

Like any other garden, of course, they require a lot of regular, repetetive work -- work for which you don't immediately see the results.  That sound like anything familiar?

Inspiration is Shy

Like a classroom full of kindergarteners on the first day of school, only one or two good ideas rattling around in your head are going to be loud and insistent enough to drive you to write if you wait for the ideas to give you the motivation. 

The vast majority of those ideas are shy enough that they will be happy to be left alone, sitting quietly and waiting for the graham crackers at snack time. 

The only way to get those ideas to come out and express themselves is to put them on the spot, to give them a chance to be heard even if they're not clamoring for attention. 

Building your Habit

There's no substitute for a regular, inexorable schedule for your writing. It might be daily, it might be once or twice a week, but unless you're at all serious about your blog, posting regularly, even when you don't have a burning idea to express, is the key to putting yourself in a position to find those shy, quiet inspirations. 

Back to the Garden

When a gardener plants a row of beans, she doesn't know which plant is going to produce best. She might make a few guesses or predictions about where the best plants have been before, about better sunlight and water, but there are enough other variables in the mix that she won't be able to predict that result 100%.  

The same is true for that daily habit -- you won't know ahead of time which blog entries will be the best, most powerful ideas before you sit down to write them. You might have some ideas, some predicions, but until you sit down to do the writing and see what you come up with, you won't know if it's going to be any good or not. 

Your Business or Organization Blog

Victory Gardens were planted by people who probably would not have bothered to grown their own produce if it were not for the war, and if the program were not wrapped in the support for the war effort.

The same thing is true for Writers at Gunpoint -- you're writing because your business needs you to, not because you love expressing yourself online and area a natural writer. You've taken on the blogging challenge as a part of your duty and loyalty. 

It will take some time for your blog to bear fruit -- for a long time it's going to be bare and weedy, and your work on it will be an act of faith more than anything else. But if you keep doing the work, putting in the time, bringing those shy ideas out into the sunlight where they can grow and develop, your blog will be your very own Victory Garden -- it will serve both you and your organization.