Hi friends,
One of the things I decided to improve in the first six months of this year is the number of
blog posts I publish.
In 2021, I started my writing practice and succeeded in shipping daily for more than 60 days in a row, with a total of 117 posts throughout the year. In 2022, I published 35 posts, and in 2023, 11 posts. Notice a pattern? One of my poor decisions was keeping a writing habit, so I wrote many drafts but only published a little. Why? Because keeping a writing habit is not the same as keeping a publishing habit.
My writing posture is entirely different when I plan to share what I write later in the day or the week at a maximum. On the other hand, when I write to keep a writing habit as I attempted in the last two years, my thoughts stay rough, unclear, and disparate. Reading it feels a lot like reading my journal, which helps me untangle my thoughts, but when I review it for publishing, I find it too raw and does not serve the reader nor inspire or encourage him.
However, when I got back to writing with the purpose of editing and sharing later, I noticed my ideas were more crisp and helpful. I just needed a short editing session a few hours later to be ready to go.
I greatly enjoy my writing process: writing a draft, leaving it to simmer, and then returning to it for polishing and publishing. That's how I created many original posts for The Sunday Spark over the 172 weeks since I launched it (I plan to publish most of them on my blog).
Commitment to writing is essential because I record it on my podcast, share it on Instagram, and send it via newsletter. It's also the foundation for my training materials and speeches.
I don't know if I will ever return to the daily writing challenge I did in 2021, which I learned so much from and will always cherish. It helped me understand what Seth Godin, who has been writing and publishing daily for years, meant when he removed the decision aspect from the writing process: "If you make the decision to blog every single day, then the only discussion I have to have with myself is what's the best blog post I can write -- not should I write a post."
I now believe in
writing in seasons, which has served me well lately. I also believe in writing to publish, not just to keep the writing habit. I already journal enough.
Are you thinking of writing more? Is writing calling you like it has been calling me for years? When will you answer the call?
As you can see, my
blog is simple, so you don't have to make your blog fancy. You can even publish under an alias if you are uncomfortable with it. The idea is to set a timer for 10 minutes at a specific time of the day that you can generally control, think of a particular someone you want to talk to with your writing, and start typing whatever comes to your mind until an idea you like takes shape. After the timer goes off, leave the piece you wrote, decide when you will return for editing and publishing, and show up again.
Once you commit, the question stops being whether you will write today and becomes what you will write about today.
One last tip: As you practice writing, you will get ideas while you are away from your screen; record them on a notes app to use them to start your next writing session and avoid the blank page scares.
