Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Secrets Behind the Blogging: Writing It Early

If you plan on blogging regularly, there are two options. One is to do just that: blog regularly. Unfortunately, not everyone has that much time or enthusiasm for such an endeavor. The second option is to keep an inventory of blog entries which you dole out on a regular basis. (This could range from cramming a week's worth of blog entries in one night or writing them during the weekend when you have the time to relax.)

I'm honestly more of the spontaneous type. Or rather the instant gratification type. Once I write something, I publish it immediately. I want the whole world to know how brilliant I am. (Of course the reality is I simply end up making a fool of myself.) Usually, my inventory of blog entries are simply one or two days ahead.

There's on exception though. Right now I've been doing weekly updates of various podcasts related to writing/fiction and gaming. Have you read last week's update? Honestly, the weekly podcasts take a lot from me, more than writing a short blog entry like this. Even if it just takes the reader five minutes to browse through that entire entry, it's the product of hours and hours of work. Because what's involved is scanning various websites, reading up on them, sometimes actually listening to their podcast, writing a one-sentence plug, and then fixing up the code (linking to the site, linking to the podcast, etc.). If I did it all in one day, it would easily consume my entire work hours. Either that or I should make a smaller link list. And I'm not settling for the latter.

So the trick for that blog entry is to work at it the entire week. Every other day, I check up on all the podcasts, looking for updates. None? Good. But more often than not, there's a new update every day that makes me want to talk about it even before Thursday. I restrain myself and repeat the process until it's finally Thursday. Unfortunately just after posting that blog entry, it's all too often than a new site has just uploaded its latest podcast, and the cycle begins anew.

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