I’m constantly striving for better ways to avoid getting things posted. Case In Point: Writing. Too often, I’m on the road or in the shower or somewhere thinking masterful thoughts and wondering why it is that the universe conspires to keep y’all from ever reading the ever-present, timely, beatific wisdom that I can bestow. It almost makes me want to shake my fist at the heavens and say, “Why haven’t those lazy hackers come up with a tool to help me offline some of the dreck that passes as thought into a blog entry that I’ll just as likely not post?” Since my god is a cynical, sadistic, old bitch of a queen, the heavens parted and I found yet another WYSIWYG editor from–of all places–the darkest of evil empires: Microsoft. Yes, Windows Live! has a blog entry writer and while it would very much prefer that you use MS’s MSN spaces, it seems to also countenance other blog systems like Movable Type. Seems to be working pretty well. Now, I’ll just have to have my busy little brain come up with a new reason to procrastinate.

I kinda like Andy. He’s easy on the eyes, amusing, motivated. I was curious about his ideas for blogging, so I signed up for his newsletter. He’s a big fan of coaching (which I thought was handily satirized by the Daily Show), but I thought his suggestions worthy of note:

1. The biggest fear around your business or industry. Vulnerability scares the heck out of anybody – but is one of the fastest ways to build rapport. My post about bookfat still gets me emails.

2. The top news story – filtered through your topic. If your an IT firm, talk about the challenges of deploying networks in disaster areas. If you are in marketing, talk about the marketing genius of Karl Rove.

3. The most popular book in your niche. No-brainer. Go to Amazon, find your category, read the top book in your category, blog your notes, make a mindmap, add an entry to Wikipedia, create a study guide, refute, rebutt, advance, expand, expound.

4. The big elephant in the room. Every industry has one. What isn’t being talked about among your colleauges? What’s the controversial topic? What is ticking people off?

5. A smart blog post from your colleague. Always feature other people on your blog, colleagues, clients, competitors…

BONUS: What you ate for lunch. Whenever I talk about blogging it always comes up, ‘Who wants to read about what someone had for lunch?’ That’s beside the point. Blog about what you learned from your lunch outing that reflect on your industry or niche. Or have lunch with someone fun/smart/crazy.

That’s it. I just wanted to catch it before I deleted the newsletter, plus I hope it strokes Andy in a good way.

Now, I’ve been thinking about doing this time and again, but I was always a little preoccupied (read procrastinating). So with a little sinus drainage and a lot of hacking, I thought I would try my hand at building one of these.

I had a little trouble getting the MoveableType executable to install properly. I had a few silly mistakes like remembering to remove the hash marks for indicating the code that should be read by MT. It’s mostly arrogance that prevented me for paying for the installation. Fortunately, one of my New Year’s resolutions is patience and I figured it out. Yahoo, now if only I fix the color…