Analog Productivity Experiments: Fighting Blog Fatigue » Webomatica – tech, movies, music blog

May 15, 2007 by chuq · Comments
Filed under: Uncategorized

Analog Productivity Experiments: Fighting Blog Fatigue » Webomatica – tech, movies, music blog:

I certainly can relate to blog fatigue. I stare at a computer for hours on end as a necessity of my job, and when I first started taking this blog seriously last fall, I had an insane goal of posting three times a day. Since then there have been much more highs than lows, but I’ve definitely noticed that although the work itself isn’t all that hard, it’s the constant feeling of the work is never done that is tiring. Meaning, you publish a post, get some reaction, and peace, but the next day, it’s that same empty space needing to be filled – day after day after day.

A realization of sorts occurred after a trip to Japan when I realized I was using technology, specifically the Internet, to excess. I was away from the computer for long stretches and it was such a relief.

Personally, I think you need to get away from the concept of a daily schedule. If you look at other writing endeavours, from newspapers to fiction, rarely is the writer on a daily deadline; most newspaper columnists are weekly, or 2-3 times a week. there are a couple of reasons for this. First, writers need time to do things other than actually write, like research on what they want to write. Second, after a while, the grind simply kills you.

Bloggers seem to be ignoring past history here (like ignoring past experience is unprecedented in blogging), and learning the hard way why things are the way they are in the real world. That leads to burnout, or at best, “three dot lounge” type posting, things that are little more than links to other places, and perhaps a snide quip or smart comment (now, can’t complain about success too much, that technique works wonderfully for engadget or techdirt, but then, I read both, but always come away with a “where’s the beef?” feeling from them…)

Now, if your income stream depends on a regular delivery of new content — maybe you should rethink how you’re generating an income stream that’s less sensitive to volume and more aligned with quality content that lasts and is used into the future; that, after all, is a key lesson I learned from my author friends in the fiction world. You can’t make a living writing short fiction, but if you can re-sell that fiction to ten foreign markets and/or combine that fiction into new forms (like part of a novel), those words become a lot more valuable to you than a story that shows up in Analog and doesn’t re-appear until the “best of” volume 3 that your heirs get published…

This is one reason my blogs go dark; yes, it’d be nice if there was this regular stream of content that the “blogging experts” say is necessary, but thanks to the wonders of RSS, people willing to subscribe to the site don’t need to wonder when I get around to writing, they’ll ind out from the subscription. I made a decision that if I didn’t have anything interesting to say — I wouldn’t prove it by posting mindless, thoughtless crap just because you’re “supposed” to post every day. If you want lots of content, instead of good content, I can point you at any number of blogs out there that’ll fill your inbox for you…

That, I think, is the key to keeping interested in blogging: blog because you want to, not because you feel you’re supposed to. Avoid the grind, do what you want to do, and spend more time working on the writing and thinking through (and researching) what you write, and do less, but make it better and more thoughtful.

after all, it’s called writing, not typing. Although in the case of a lot of blogging, I think we might reconsider…

Also, don’t forget that writing is, actually, work. And that you shouldn’t see this as being paid to blog (if you in fact generate any income from blogging), but you are, in fact, making money for having something worth reading when you write. Back when I was writing a monthly book review column, I had many readers ask how they could get paid to read books. The reality is, a book reviewer isn’t paid to read books. They’re FORCED to read books so they have material to write about that readers will be interested in reading.

But I’ve talked about that in the past:

Chuqui 3.0: Fraser Speirs – Making a living with the camera:

Way back when, when I was publishing OtherRealms and writing book reviews for Amazing Stories, even though I was a life-long, hard-core reader, I came to realize there was no bigger hell than a deadline tuesday, a stack of books, and a sad realization they were all crap. I finally stopped writing to deadline, and instead went back to writing for fun (I have this stack, maybe 4′ high, of books waiting to be reviewed — seriously — but with all the other stuff I’ve been trying to catch up on, it hasn’t happened yet.)

That, as much as anything, is why I’m just not interested in going back to writing on deadline yet. For me, this is still about having something to say and enjoying saying it, not about “the grind” and deadlines and readership and advertising and metrics and all that. And whiel that may change someday, I’m in no hurry. And I hope the (much appreciated) few that read my blogs know that if I go quiet, it’s because my interest is more about not insulting them with crap in the name of a deadline, but in actually having something to say, and taking the time to say it well, so that it’s worth reading….