Writing daily, but posting when ready

2019-11-01

I just finished an experiment. Last month, I published a new article to my blog every day. I’m glad I tried it, but ultimately I didn’t like it. Here’s why:

It made my writing worse, not better. I was trying to force a conclusion quicker. I was skipping steps 2-5 of my writing process. I didn’t have the time to look at more angles or doubt my first conclusion. I was spending more time being shallow, to get something posted, instead of taking that time to go deeper.
It broke the silent promise I’ve always had with my readers: that anything I post to my site is really worth your time. I already write many hours a day privately, but I only post something to the public when I feel it’s really worth sharing. But with the daily post? There were some good ideas in there, but I wasn’t entirely proud of the articles. They were under-developed. I didn’t feel 100% that they were so worth your time.
I was spending 3-6 hours per day writing my daily post. So I hardly worked on my next book or anything else. Coming up with a daily post was becoming a full-time job. And, considering the previous two points here, an unwise one.

It did make me write more, so I’ll probably find the happy medium now. I’ll be posting more than I used to before this experiment, but not every day. Only when I think it’s really worth your time.

P.S. For the record, here are my 33 daily posts: