Writing isn’t everyone’s forte, but if you face a chronic condition, don’t overlook the potential benefits of keeping a chronic illness blog.
Studies have shown that bloggers with chronic illness feel more connected and better informed. Blogs give you the opportunity to educate others, including those with a similar diagnosis or even medical professionals.
A Pew Internet Project study of Internet usage and chronic disease found this:
The deck is stacked against people living with chronic disease. They are disproportionately offline. They often have complicated health issues, not easily solved by the addition of even the best, most reliable, medical advice. And yet, those who are online have a trump card. They have each other.
We mentioned the importance of blogging and writing (follow link and see #9) before, but to help you get started using that “trump card,” here are some tips and resources for chronic illness blogging.
Think outside the traditional blog
Blogging is no longer simply a journal that is on a screen. Today, blogging can involve sharing links, images, videos or other graphics, news and resources—with as little or much original text as you choose.
The first step to starting a chronic illness blog is to consider what you wish you could find online but don’t—and offer that space. It could be encouraging quotes related to invisible illness. It might be exercise videos for pulmonary hypertension patients. Or it could be a collection of all the latest high-quality research on Gaucher disease and genetics.
Free platforms
While there are a variety of places to publish whatever it is you decide to share, they aren’t all the same. (You can find detailed comparisons of free platforms here and here.) Decide what your needs are so you can choose the option that works best for you.
Upload your story
If you are looking for the therapy of writing and publishing some aspect of your story, with none of the responsibility or pressure to maintain a site or submit to one, a good option is a publishing platform such as Medium.com. The only thing you need to get started is the ability to set up an account.
Most of these are set up to publish text and images, rather than video or links. To have an idea of what that looks like, see: “What No One Told Me About Chronic Pain.”
Submit your story
If you’d like to write, but want an established audience, free editing and a reputable brand to do some promotion for you, you can find a site that publishes stories like yours and submit to them. The Mighty is probably the best-known curator and producer of chronic illness stories. Check out its submission guidelines here.
Curate information
Do you want to post any kind of media (audio, video, gifs, photos, text), but not create your own regularly? A social media or social blogging site is a good option. With these, you can still have a page or domain of your own.
This could be as simple as starting a Facebook page or group where you post your own photos and share others. Facebook groups are a little bit unique in that you can make them private or closed to have discussions while keeping a sense of security and intimacy.
Or, consider a social blogging site such as Tumblr. You can post as many of your own written blogs as you want. But you can also follow and with once click share other users’ posts. Others can comment on your posts, so your personal stream or page becomes a social collection of material you curated. You can also choose your own colors and fonts. (See the Chronically Invisible Tumblr for an example.)
Do it all!
Some sites, such as WordPress, Weebly or Blogger, allow you to set up a basic site all of your own. You can write, edit, post and customize most elements from a predesigned theme. The free version will take you 5-10 minutes to set up and you’ll be ready to start writing and publishing on your own domain.
You can sort through other bloggers’ material, but it isn’t a streamlined part of the interface and does not offer one-click sharing. This kind of blogging is probably the most labor-intensive option. But it offers the most possibilities for growing a following, having advertisers, and posting original work while directing others to content you find valuable.
Resources
Once you pick your outlet, you can begin to develop your blogging identity—maybe as a community manager or a niche resource curator. Here are a few good resources to get you started.
On writing:
On sharing:
On learning to blog:
If you’re interested in learning more about chronic illness and blogging, check out this research and this map of chronic illness bloggers.