Ah yes, another one of those oddly meta “blog entries about blogging.” I’m mostly writing this one because, as with most of December, it’s been a bit of a long day and I don’t feel like cranking out anything more substantial.
In any case, over the past few months I’ve set myself up with a schedule of Monday through Friday posting. It’s not a hard, set in stone schedule — if I honestly don’t have time, or can’t write something on a day, that’s fine, and if I do want to publish something on a Saturday or Sunday (like something time sensitive) then that’s fine too. The idea is that, in practice, this gives me days to at least try to create content, and days to rest. Simple. Effective.
This of course means my weekends are totally free to focus on other things, and if I really feel like being proactive, pre-write and schedule entries. I have yet to do that, but I have the option. This also makes things a little more predictable around here, and really, at its core, cuts back on the personal drive to be productive and the stress associated with that. At least I get some reprieve from it every day.
That’s not to say writing takes a long time, but I find myself feeling an urge, almost a need, to write, and this in a sense is a way to force myself to step back and away from the “gotta write and publish, content is good, content is needed” mentality which kind of took hold once I started writing more regularly.
Honestly, it’s kind of crazy. It’s been 5 years of me really writing for the site in a more regular capacity. Honestly, my rate of production has been great, but the content substance has been hit or miss. That’s the nature of “finding your voice” in all this, and at times I’ve tried different things which have mostly been failed experiments, or ideas I’ve just gotten burnt out on.
Adhering to a schedule of posting, however, has been beneficial. November was a pretty solid month, I’d say, and while December had a bit of a gap in it early on, I’m doing decent now (albeit every post is late in the day now, I need to work on that) and I feel like my writing is moving in the right direction.
So, that’s something to take away from this, I guess — if you’re a blogger and you feel pressured from your own drive to write, make a publishing schedule of times, days, whatever works, which will be when you actually write or publish content, and leave the other days free for whatever. Treat it like a work schedule, but don’t think of it as work — still think of it as creativity, art, expression, whatever, but maybe within structure the uniqueness of your work will flow better.
Or maybe I’m just crazy and this is the only way I can deal with a compulsion to write about things.
It’s definitely one or the other…