A guest blogger can provide you with time to rejuvenate your creative flow—or just rejuvenate. Removing the constant pressure to come up with something fresh for even one day can jumpstart the imagination and offers other obvious benefits. Having a well-known personality guest blog can drive traffic to your site; an industry expert can provide quality content and useful information, and a new voice is a fun surprise for your readers. The trick is to choose the right person to write a guest post for your blog. Who would make the ultimate guest blogger—a beloved contemporary writer, someone who writes about writing, or someone whose work has stood the test of time?
Contemporary Writers
One might choose the obviously beloved contemporary writer J. K. Rowling to guest post, but my choice in this category would be Alison McGhee. Perhaps lesser known, McGhee has written numerous award-winning novels and unbelievably charming children’s books, all while maintaining a fine blog herself. Her novel Shadow Baby was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. I’d choose McGhee to guest post because despite her solid, quiet success as a writer, she comports herself as if she has much more work to do before she can claim she’s arrived, but she knows exactly how to get there. Surely, McGhee has secrets of success to share with those who read not just her books but her blog and, maybe someday, mine.
The Road to Success
Readers and writers love to read writers who write about writing, right? And so, my ultimate guest blogger list would include Annie Dillard, Anne Lamott and Natalie Goldberg.
- The author of many books, including the helpful writing companion The Writing Life, Annie Dillard received a Pulitzer Prize for her novel, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a book she says she wrote almost fanatically; she weighed a mere 98 pounds when it was finished. Though she takes a less fervent approach to writing these days, her work is no less prescient.
- Anne Lamott is the author of numerous books, including the highly relevant and delightful Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. If Lamott’s contribution to your blog proved as rich in humor and full of inspiration as Bird by Bird, readers would fancy the life of a writer in more ways than one after reading her guest post.
- Although hardly a textbook, Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within has become essential reading for creative writing classes across the country. More inspiration than how-to, Goldberg’s book can cure almost any case of writer’s block and, perhaps, awaken a sleeping giant in those who’d previously only dreamed of being a writer.
The Aftermath
If only it were possible, who wouldn’t benefit from a guest post at their blog by the most famous bard of all time? William Shakespeare is in a class unto himself when it comes to quality content. Whether your blog is driven by drama, comedy or poetry, no one does it like Shakespeare. It’s been said he didn’t write his plays himself. If he were able to blog from the grave, perhaps he could set that record straight. Even if he chose not to dignify the arguments against him, wouldn’t it be thrilling to see what he did have to say after centuries of having his work performed and adapted without his input?
This list of ultimate guest bloggers may seem unusual, but a blogger must never underestimate the element of surprise. So, who would you choose to guest post your blog? Surprise me!
Diana R. is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments. WriterAccess is powered by ideaLaunch.
