Blogging daily is tough. I just passed six months and I’m going strong, but it’ll end at some point. For now, though, here is how I make it happen.
Lots of ideas
The biggest challenge for me is coming up with ideas. Following the idea of “long periods of thinking, short periods of writing“, actually creating each post only takes me around 15-20 minutes — it’s the work to get to that point that takes more time.
I have two older posts that talk about finding ideas, and these are still my best sources:
- To write more, read more
- Related, I get quite a bit out of Blinkist books.
- Writing like you’re on a photo walk
Whatever you do, though, be sure to capture every idea you have. I put mine under a #blogideas tag in Roam Research, but you can store yours anywhere. They key is to get them out of your head and saved somewhere so you don’t forget about them.
I’ll take those short #blogideas in Roam and add other small notes or links as they come up, but most of the work happens directly in the WordPress editor as I start building out the post.
Batches of time
The key to my recent streak is really the concept of batching. I write a handful of posts in one sitting, and then drip them out over the subsequent days.
This is partially only possible because of the types of posts that I write. If I was covering breaking tech news or something, I couldn’t hold posts for days at a time. By mostly writing more evergreen content, it allows me to stack some up. I generally like to have 6-8 in the tank ready to go, but as of this writing I only have two in there so it’s time to catch up!
In terms of specific timing for writing, I have two main windows for this:
- Weekday evenings. After I drop my daughter off at dance and dinner dishes have been put up, I have about 90 minutes to myself. This is a big time for reading and writing. Ideas come all during the day, but it’s generally this time when I’ll pull them back out and start working through them.
- Weekend afternoons. This varies a lot more, based on yard work, family trips, etc, but I often find a few open hours in the afternoons on weekends and can put a bit of time in there.
Every day?
I’ve mentioned before that I kind of cheat at the “blogging every day”, because while I publish every day I don’t technically write every day. That may change with time, but right now it’d be very difficult to do. Kudos to those that can make it work.
I’ll leave you with a link to see Marc’s writing process, which inspired me to create this post. While I don’t follow the same format as him, we have a few similarities and perhaps something in his writing will inspire you.
If you publish frequently, what does your process look like?
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