I’ve just sat down and run the numbers – if I continue at my current blog posting rate, after one year I will have published a total of 142 new entries!
My current posting schedule is as follows:
- Two posts a week here (104 posts/year)
- Once a fortnight about European railways at www.eurogunzel.com (26 posts/year)
- Once a month on Hong Kong at www.checkerboardhill.com (12 posts/year)
As to how I managed to churn out so many blog posts, I don’t actually sit down at the same time every weekend and type out the posts for the next week. Instead, my workflow is as flows:
Step 1:
Add an entry to my ever increasing list of prospective blog post topics. Normally they are just links to newspaper articles, interesting reports in PDF format, or a collection of photos I’m intending to write more about.
Step 2:
Dig through my list of draft entries until I find something that grabs my interest, then start writing and further research.
Step 3:
Hit a roadblock and procrastinate. Writers block, a dead end on the research front, or a lack of photos are common causes.
Step 4 (optional):
Realise I have bitten off more than I can chew for one blog post, and spin off part of it into a future post. A variant of this is when I find other interesting bits and pieces while researching one subject, resulting in a new entry being added to my list of prospective topics.
Step 5:
Decide the post is finished, and put it into my pending articles pile.
Step 6:
Dig through my pending articles pile, and add them to my list of scheduled posts.
Step 7:
You eventually see the article online.
Footnote
So how long does my workflow take?
My recent ‘Fairness in PTV fare evasion penalties?‘ post started as a draft back in December 2014, and required three separate editing sessions to polish up.
My ‘Where does Geelong’s sewage go?‘ was a much bigger job, being almost two years in the making – I started it way back in August 2013, spent some time on it in December 2014, then polished it off in July 2015.
Weirdly, I was just wondering about this very topic last week. Had assumed you probably penned your blog posts while utilising Melbourne’s public transport system.
When on the train I get too distracted by trains outside the window to be able to focus on blog posts. 🙂
Interesting. I find I can never revitalise an old post. No matter how much potential the idea had I find they’re cold and stale when I come back to them.
My favourite way to come up with a good blog idea is to look on twitter – but I look at my own tweets. If I spy a germ of an original idea that I’ve had myself there’s nothing more inspiring.
I’ve found the same thing with Twitter – there is only so much you can say in 140 characters, but it provides a launching point for a new blog post.
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