So I used to have a blog, but I felt this pressure to publish stuff regularly. And that showed in the quality of posts I wrote; shitty, unsolicited articles about nothing. And when I didn't have enough content (whatever that means), I just filled it with random garbage. I've deleted that blog entirely since then.
I've also come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of posts - regular, essay-like blog posts and just random thoughts. These random thoughts could just be 1-2 lines or just a paragraph. You don't need to develop them into a full article. Twitter is designed for this, but Twitter is also suitable for a lot of other things, so you shouldn't feel like you can't have these in your blog.
Maybe I should write a blog post about this lol. I've been collecting topics to write in a text file so that I won't run out of stuff to write. But I now think it's perfectly fine to go 3-4 months without an article, until you feel like writing one that's worthy. I know this is a bit contradictory to point 2/39 in this post, but I just thought I should share.
I remember when you could just throw just anything you'd like up on a site and call it good. Curating was (or could be) part of it, but if you wanted to say, "fuck curation" you could. It was YOUR website; it's not a curated exhibit in a museum. Just be an amateur at something. Make a lot of noise!
I think that's ok if you're writing for yourself or for a bunch of friends.
But good blogs with steady readership generally curate. Readers gravitate towards quality (because time and attention span are precious) and lose interest fast if the quality is all over the place.
Most bloggers write more posts than they actually publish. The published ones are the ones that pass muster. We don't see the stuff in their drafts folder.
> I've also come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of posts - regular, essay-like blog posts and just random thoughts.
Blog posts are not limited to those two kinds. I have a blog where I don't write too often. Whenever I have a programming problem whose solution couldn't be found easily by searching on internet, I write a small technical and to-the-point post about it, hoping that it will be useful to anybody else that may have the same issue.
If you feel pressured to publish stuff regularly, probably you're keeping a blog for the "wrong" reasons.
> I've also come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of posts
I had come to this same conclusion for my own posting habits! I'm hoping to finish my website this weekend and will probably implement a microblog for the little thoughts and a (macro?)blog for the bigger pieces.
(I'd just use Twitter as my microblog but I like the idea of inline hyperlinks in my posts more than is perhaps healthy.)
I've also come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of posts - regular, essay-like blog posts and just random thoughts. These random thoughts could just be 1-2 lines or just a paragraph. You don't need to develop them into a full article. Twitter is designed for this, but Twitter is also suitable for a lot of other things, so you shouldn't feel like you can't have these in your blog.
Maybe I should write a blog post about this lol. I've been collecting topics to write in a text file so that I won't run out of stuff to write. But I now think it's perfectly fine to go 3-4 months without an article, until you feel like writing one that's worthy. I know this is a bit contradictory to point 2/39 in this post, but I just thought I should share.