Lately, I have been thinking about how I can find time to add more content to my blog. I take pride in the fact that I present useful, reasonably-well written content.
It takes me many hours to produce the Friday post because I have to organize and present my thoughts well if I am going to show you how to do something useful.
They also take time because I am a perfectionist when it comes to my writing. I LOVE to write and I LOVE to solve problems, which means I am always tweaking sentences and searching for better words.
A respondent to my reader survey told me that the one thing that I could do to help them would be to “blog more.” Initially, I took in the flattering comment and then brushed it aside. Only my brain keeps coming back to it because I do want to blog more.
I am trying to finish an article for an academic journal so I can get to what I really want to do, which is revise my book. If I write more blog content, I have less time to work on my book and freelance projects.
Then I had a thought: What if I offer a less-well polished, more free-thought post on Tuesdays or Thursdays about the challenges I face as a writer and historian?
I am still tinkering with this idea. I have questions/concerns about it.
First, would you find it interesting and helpful to know more about what I am working on and the challenges I face while working on it?
These wouldn’t be posts about solutions because I haven't found one yet.
I believe there are benefits to acknowledging a challenge without knowing the solution. I also like the idea that it could be an opportunity for us to find solutions together. Additionally, I feel that these posts may help you get to know the real me better.
I often feel like my Friday posts make it seem like I have it all figured out, which I don’t. In fact, I spend most of my time and mental energy trying to figure out how to solve problems and acquire information I do not know (which is a lot.)
Second, how much does polished writing matter to you?
I don’t plan on posting unintelligible musings, but writing that is more in the style of this post. Writing that I haven’t spent a lot of time editing or agonizing over.
Third, would you mind if these new posts were less regular?
I take my commitments to you seriously; I always do my best to stick to my blogging schedule. My commitment to you means that if I need to prune something out of my schedule because a project takes more time then expected, a random hiccup in my schedule occurs, or a family emergency comes up, one of the last items that I would leave undone would be my blog posts.
Right now, committing to a fourth, regular post seems daunting. I am not ready to make a full-commitment to it. What I am willing to do is try them out and make them as regular as possible.
I suppose if I miss a week, that would give us fodder to discuss the following week because it meant a challenge came up.
So, What Do You Think?
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