Blogging, or the lack of it

As you can notice, I’ve been blogging very sporadically over the years. And I’m trying my best to amend that. There have been times of super productivity, and times of writing nothing for a couple of months. One of the reasons for it is the perceived lack of time to do, but probably the main reason is the lack of will or fear to write. I have read a great book by Sacha Chua called A No-Excuses Guide to Blogging which has kicked me in the butt, and forced me to think more about sharing the work I do, and produce more digital content. You should definitely read it, especially if you work in the tech industry like I do.

My outtakes from the book are, that you should write every day, and don’t be afraid that you will sound stupid, or come in a wrong way, while you are starting out, because even Seth Godin was a beginner writer way way back, before he published his first materials. And I can bet that he struggled with blocks, and everything you, and I, are struggling with when starting to write. But the act of writing more and more, and sharing everything you know with the world, will not only make you a better writer, you will also learn a lot quicker by writing things down, and could get the public recognition for the work you do.

The big question is, what to write about, and Sacha’s book answers it completely. You write about anything and everything, just sit down and write about what you are learning, reading, or going through in your day to day work. Write things down for yourself, on how to set up the deployment for x, or how to retouch a certain type of photo, other people may find it helpful. If you can help just one person struggling on the Internet, trying to find the solution to X, you have done a great job. And when you have to do the same task, sometime in the future, you will have your own reference to look into, and avoid the process of finding a solution again and again. You can also interview someone you work with, they surely have a lot to share with the world, as everyone does. And maybe you will get them into creating a blog, and writing themselves.

Try to have friends or family read your drafts, and point to any mistakes if and when you make some, and you do the same thing for them, because the effort spent writing and reading other people’s material will only make you a better developer/designer and definitely a better person.

Commit to write every day, you do not have to publish it, but just go and write. There is a great post from Nathan Barry, the self published author of Authority, and other well received books, in which he describes how a commitment to write 1000 words a day, each day made him quite a lot of money, and skyrocketed his audience.

You do not have to be so drastic and write 1000 words a day, start slowly and then progress. Try to write at least 200 words, about anything, some of it will be worth publishing, some of it will be crap, some of it will be gold. However, that is what life and work are all about, even if you were some mythical creature, being able to produce only great stuff all the time, that doesn’t work in the long run, at least not for me.