It’s halfway through Quiethaven at LessOnline, an hour where conversation is forbidden to encourage writing. I’ve been meaning to publish more content here, but often find myself bottlenecked on writing speed. The ideas bounce around my head, but it’s daunting to sit down and write a whole post, so the posts don’t get written and the blog stays more barren than I’d like. I’ve been thinking and talking about how to publish more, and this post will both describe and apply my conclusions. I intend to occasionally read this post as a reminder to myself, and if you enjoy it as well, so much the better. Here’s how I’ll publish more content on my blog:
Write shorter posts
Most of my posts up until now have been essays exploring ideas I’ve put a lot of thought into. I often like reading longform others put out, and so I had a notion that that’s what a blog post is “supposed” to be. However, if I want to publish more often, one way to do that is to just jot down whatever I’m thinking about! Something is better than nothing; better to publish a single thought than not-publish a fleshed out edifice.
Write worse posts
The other thing slowing me down is my perfectionist bent. I spend a lot of time refinining and polishing my writing, and asking others for feedback in iterative cycles. This does make the posts I publish better, but vastly increases the amount of time they take to create. By lowering my quality bar, I can be less daunted by the prospect of writing, and get far more posts out the door. If I’m truly unsatisfied with a post, I can always go back and refine it later!
The imagined audience in my head has very high standards, and I’ve been hesitant to consume their time with writing that might leave them unsatisfied. However, I think my actual audience in real life finds my thoughts more interesting than I imagine and would really prefer to see more of them! If I start hearing complaints about my writing quality, I may reconsider, but for now I’m going to embrace writing shorter, less-refined posts, and get more content out there for my dear readers.
The gong just rang to signal the end of Quiethaven, so it’s time to publish!