I’m going to cut right to the chase for once: You should write an article for SurvivalBlog because the prizes are great!
In addition to that, you should write an article because everyone has a skill, or knowledge, or a viewpoint that would benefit the rest of us. That includes you. Everybody has something to contribute. Many of us look at SurvivalBlog as an online group discussion and everyone would like to hear from you.
How I Got Started Writing Articles
Before I was a regular SurvivalBlog reader, I used to run across SurvivalBlog articles now and then in my Internet searches. As I was building up my homestead I often searched for different ideas on how to accomplish one project or another. Many times I’d get a hit on a SurvivalBlog article so I’d click on the link to read the article. I must confess, I hated wading through those three screens of the SurvivalBlog writing contest stuff, the list of prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, and rules like an article submission needing a 1,500-word minimum. I wanted to get right to the article on the topic I was researching instead of reading about a contest. Then one day I asked myself, “What’s this stuff actually about anyway?” As I read through the rules and the prize lists, I thought, “Wow, I have something I could contribute here, and those prizes look great!”
Over the next few days, I ruminated on this as I was working around the homestead. Maybe I could write a decent article about the rocket-stove water heater I had built? I thought it would be a good topic because I’m probably not the only prepper on the planet who wouldn’t want to face TEOTWAWKI without a good supply of Thin Mints and hot water. That first article, “Rocket Water Heater” Part 1 and Part 2 turned out to be a success and I won a prize. The prizes included an AR-15 upper from DRD Tactical, $300 worth of gunsmithing DVDs from the American Gunsmithing Institute, a $250 gift certificate from Sunflower Ammo, and two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried dinners in #10 cans. I later ate those during my 10-day preps test. Wow, over $1,000 worth of merchandise just for writing an article.
I had fun writing the article and after submitting it, waited with bated breath to see if it would be published. Every morning when I’d wake up, as soon as my feet hit the floor I’d check SurvivalBlog to see if my article had been published yet. Darn, not today. When it was finally published, I was grins and giggles, all day. Unfortunately, as a closet prepper, I couldn’t share my joy with anyone other than my cat. He didn’t seem too interested.
I thought I might have some other ideas worth publishing. As I was working on various projects around the homestead where I’m striving for self-reliance, I’d think about what topics might be of interest to others. I’d write ideas down and when I had enough of them, start a folder for that topic. Sometimes the ideas were coming so fast I’d have to run into the house and write them all down. It was a fun experience and still is.
Even though I still write for the prizes, now it feels more important to share some of the talents and knowledge I’ve gained throughout my life with people of a like mindset who are preparing for our world’s very uncertain future. I’ve wanted to live a self-reliant lifestyle on my own acreage since I was in elementary school and read My Side of the Mountain. Since then, I’ve been on a course to learn all I could about being self-reliant. Along the way, I’ve learned a few things that would be worth sharing with other people who had similar ideals in life.
That first article was almost four years ago and I’ve been reading SurvivalBlog faithfully every day, first thing in the morning after I get the coffee brewed and sit down in my reading chair. I no longer mind wading through all that info about prizes awarded for the writing contest. The prizes change from time to time so I do glance through them now and then.
After winning and using some of the prizes, I wondered how I made it this far in life without them. I read Jack Lawson’s Civil Defense Manual (not to be confused with the boring government ones issued during the Cold War) and it was a real eye-opener. I arrived at the opinion that any prepper worth his MREs should get a copy. In the chapter on water sources, I laughed my head off while reading his story about a bad water source in Mozambique during his black-ops training. The water tank turned out to include a dead decomposing monkey so he ended up with a nasty case of amoebic dysentery which lasted for two months. He couldn’t hold it in most of the time so he fashioned a diaper and carried on in his training. Picture a muscular soldier wearing a green beret and a diaper. So even something like a Civil Defense Manual can be entertaining for some of us. It was a great prize to win and full of important prepping information aside from always checking your water sources.
After winning 2,000’ of military-spec paracord from ToughGrid.com, holy cow, I was sure I had died and gone to heaven where even the angel’s harps are strung with paracord. Two-thousand feet is over a third of a mile of paracord. Get writing!
Do You Have Anything Worth Writing About?
Of course you do!
Some articles are written for people at certain levels of knowledge. It’s not possible for every article to interest every SurvivalBlog reader. Most of the ham radio articles are way over my head but some of the ham radio authors are able to dumb down their articles for beginners. Both types of articles are necessary. Experienced ham operators wouldn’t find much of value in the beginner articles and vice versa, the newbies would be swimming in deep water without a life jacket if they tried to get through the technical ones. The articles on firearms don’t particularly interest me but for others, those are the main reason they read SurvivalBlog. On the other hand, when it was time to upgrade my 9mm pistol, I went straight to Pat Cascio’s article on the one I was contemplating buying. His was a rave review and without hesitation I made the purchase.
So it doesn’t matter what level you’re on, write an article. Somebody will need the information at the level you’re writing at. Even if they don’t read it today they may run across it in the future when they realize they need more expertise on the subject your article covers. Don’t be afraid to write something too technical, some readers will find it valuable while others will skip over it hoping for something better tomorrow. Don’t be afraid to write an article which is too basic. There are newbies just starting to get into prepping and self-reliant living and your article will be savored by them and bookmarked. We all have to start somewhere. This brings up another point: a good percentage of SurvivalBlog readers aren’t even preppers, just people trying to learn self-reliance principles in order to live a simpler life.
Many SurvivalBlog articles cover a topic that is an eye-opener to someone who hasn’t gotten to the point of even thinking about that subject yet. What a great contribution your article will be for that person’s progression in prepping. The most recent article for me which falls into that category was Anon-6’s article “A Nuclear Attack Quick Actions Checklist” Part 1, and Part 2. Do I think there’s a chance of nuclear war in the future? Yes. Am I trying to prepare for TEOTWAWKI? Yes. Then how could I have not included this topic in my preps? Thanks to Anon-6 for submitting the article. It’s now on my to-do list to research this winter when things on the homestead slow down and I have a lot more research time. (I may have to start sooner as the Middle East War heats up.) Did some readers gloss over the article or skip it altogether? Sure, but it was an important article for other readers. You could contribute an article in the same category, something that some readers haven’t yet thought about prepping for.
For those needing ideas on what to write an article about, there’s a list posted on SurvivalBlog with ideas on what future articles readers would like to see. These ideas were gleaned from a survey of SurvivalBlog readers. Do you have anything you can write about from this list? If so, start jotting down your ideas and develop it into an article.
Some of the Snippets contributions are so insightful and share enough information that I’ve wished many times that the author would write an entire article on the subject to fill in more details.
Is Your Topic Relevant in 2023?
Don’t be afraid to write an article that you think people may not find totally relevant in 2023. I’m a huge fan of reusing canning lids contrary to what all the “conventional wisdom” says so I submitted two articles on the subject. Very few people will even consider reusing canning lids no matter how convincing the personal testimonies are, or what the science says. It’s guaranteed that after the SHTF and no new canning lids are available for love nor money, people will be grateful to run across those articles on the SurvivalBlog Archive stick.
If you’re one who likes to test conventional wisdom for yourself whenever possible, many of us would like to hear about your discoveries. Some of us believe that way too much conventional wisdom is conventional but lacking in wisdom. If you can help in that area, please share it with SurvivalBlog readers in an article.
A section of one of my upcoming articles deals with a topic that I won’t reveal yet. Most readers will read it and think, “This is nuts, nobody would actually do this.” Yet I’m including it because not only do I use the method myself as our ancestors did, but in a grid-down world most people will have to use it regardless of how disgusting they find it to be in 2023. It’s not disgusting once you start using it post-TEOTWAWKI and realize great-great-grandma was right. So that section of the article isn’t even written to benefit anyone today but I hope it will be very valuable to survivors if the S ever hits the F. As you’re deciding on an article topic, don’t be afraid to choose one that’ll be more relevant to those who find themselves in a TEOTWAWKI situation than it is today.
Is Your Article a Repeat of Someone Else’s?
When I first started writing articles I’d get an idea and then search through back articles on SurvivalBlog to see if that subject had ever been written upon. I didn’t want to repeat any topics that had already been covered. Then it occurred to me that if ten articles were written on home defense or rabbit raising, by ten different authors, each article would be unique and offer a perspective the others hadn’t. Each article would have something of its own to offer. So I quit researching back articles and write about whatever subjects where I think I may have something to offer. In the future, including after the SHTF, readers are going to want varying opinions and methods on how to accomplish something. They’ll be able to read those from their SurvivalBlog Archive Stick and be grateful for all the people who contributed articles over the years. They, and we, will want to know all the different methods of dealing with issues from animal husbandry to zipper repair in a grid-down world so they can make the decisions about what would work best in their situation.
Recently Tunnel Rabbit wrote an article that mentioned Country Living Grain Mills and his do-it-yourself motorized version. I have one and they come with a hand crank. My hands developed arthritis a few years back and it’s a painful chore to hold on to and turn that crank for the amount of time it takes to grind a pound of wheat into flour. I sent in a question to the Snippets column to see if Tunnel Rabbit could explain the details of how he motorized his mill. JWR sent me back a link to an article called Motorizing a Country Living Grain Mill for 12-volt Battery and Solar, by I.S. Part 1, Part 2. Wow, that’s exactly what I was looking for, right here on SurvivalBlog. Had I thought to consult my SurvivalBlog Archive USB Stick as those after the SHTF will have to do, the article was right there to instruct me on the construction. You too have some ideas that others would benefit from and after reading will say to themselves: “Wow, that’s exactly what I was looking for.”
Start Writing
Think of a talent or skill that you have which could perhaps be developed into an article. Sometimes an idea won’t occur to you until you are actually doing the thing. For example, an idea about one of your canning techniques may not come until a day when you’re in the middle of canning. Other ideas will come from the daily SurvivalBlog articles you read.
As you go through the day, jot ideas down and at some point you’ll have enough to start writing the article. As you start putting those ideas down on paper (or computer) more ideas will come. Pretty soon you’ll flesh out enough details to reach the 1,500-word minimum for an article. That sounds like a lot of words but it really isn’t. That’s why many SurvivalBlog articles are published in several installments, some as many as six parts. Some subjects take 10,000 words, others only 1,500.
Once I start writing, the approach I take is to just start writing as fast as the ideas flow. Those of us who grew up before computers were common know how painful it was to do a cut-and-paste task. It was literally done with scissors and Elmer’s glue. With computers which allow us to cut and paste with the click of a mouse, I can write in any particular order as the ideas are flowing and then as the article progresses, I can begin to cut and paste the paragraphs to put them in a more logical order. With articles that have many subheadings, I often move entire sections to a better place.
Proper Grammar – Who Cares!
Don’t get overly concerned with where commas should go. Don’t worry about all those parts of speech you learned about in high school. Honestly, all I know is what nouns, verbs, adjectives, and superlatives are. I’ve heard of dangling participles and love to throw the phrase around in jest, but I have no clue what it means. Really. I don’t know what a participle is or what it could be dangling from.
The only special thing I know about English grammar is that compound adjectives should be hyphenated so that the reader knows you mean. If someone wrote “I saw a man eating lion today,” you’re not sure if the lion was a man eater or if you saw a guy chowing down on a lion steak. Since “man eating” is describing the lion, the two adjectives get hyphenated. It should read, “I saw a man-eating lion today.” Unless of course he was eating lunch at Larry’s Lionburgers, then no hyphen is needed. But you know what? In 98.3% of the cases, it’s not especially important because the proper meaning will be understood either way. So don’t worry about hyphenating your compound adjectives, just write!
Which? That? Do I say “The dog which bit me” or, “the dog that bit me?” Who cares! If there’s a proper way, not many people would catch it. I’ve researched it but can’t remember what I read or if there even is a proper choice. The take-home message: don’t worry about all that grammar stuff your high school English teacher tried in vain to teach you. Just write!
Tell Us What You Know, Not What You’ve Read
One of the few rules of SurvivalBlog article writing is that they must come from our personal knowledge and experiences. I’ve always wanted to hear about what people have done, not what they’ve read so I’m glad for this SurvivalBlog article rule. I can’t tell you how many articles I’ve read on the internet where it was plain to see the person had no experience in the subject. They come across as a graduate fresh out of college with an English or Journalism degree with no real-world experience but lots of experience researching term papers. Don’t tell us what you’ve read, tell us what you know. And you know a lot from your experiences. Share it with us.
Proofreading
As with all those term papers you wrote in high school, proofreading is important. I’ve read and re-read and changed and rewritten some of my articles so many times I can’t even see the mistakes anymore. One problem is when your word processor makes auto-corrections that are incorrect based on what you mean, or when you make a typo which is a real word so the spell checker misses it. If you type “heat” when you meant to write “heart” then the spell checker will miss it. If possible, get someone to proofread your article before submitting it. If you’re a closet prepper like many of us and there’s no one to do your proofreading without blowing your cover, the best approach is to get your article to the point where you’re happy with the finished product, then let it sit for a week or two. After that, do a final proofreading. You’ll be surprised what you’ll see after taking a rest from it. Even then you’ll miss some. Not to worry, JWR is the editor and an editor’s job is to edit your article and fix any egregious errors that he sees.
You may still end up with typos or misstate something because your memory isn’t what it used to be. You may express an opinion that won’t go over so well, or write about a topic that people in general don’t like. (My article on DIY composting toilets comes to mind.) But no problem, you’re writing under your SurvivalBlog pseudonym so your high-school English teacher won’t write you a nasty letter about using all those dangling participles. Nobody will embarrass you at the next family reunion by exposing the fact that you’re one of those tinfoil-hat preppers preparing for the possibility of, ha-ha-ha, World War III. Best of all, your anonymity guarantees angry mobs won’t show up at your house with pitchforks and torches!
You’re Not Aiming for a Pulitzer Prize
SurvivalBlog readers know you’re not shooting for a Pulitzer prize, we just want to hear what you have to say and what you can teach us. So write the article. Tell us what you know. Please, share your experience with us.
Conclusion
I’ve read and re-read and edited and re-edited this article so many times now I can’t see the errors anymore. I let it sit for a week, did a final proofreading and now it’s time to hit the send button. I had to go back just now and write “proofreading” as a single word. The errors aren’t overly important, they are what they are, the message will still get across. Yours will too.
I hope you’ve been encouraged to at least think about writing an article. You’ll feel good about helping the rest of us on our prepping journey to learn something new or open our eyes to a prepping area we haven’t yet considered. It’s always fun to see your own words in print, published on one of your favorite blogs. And in case I haven’t mentioned it yet, the prizes are awesome! Take a look at the prize list at the beginning of each day’s article. Think about how nice it would be to win some of those. Three cheers and thanks to all those businesses who support SurvivalBlog and donate the prizes.
Now, go get some of them! But most importantly, we want to read what you have to share about your knowledge and experiences. Please, get writing!