It Takes Me An Hour To Write Most Blog Posts

An honest look at my writing process

My friend George J. Ziogas recently tagged me in a post in a private group explaining how much he likes my posting style. Thanks George!

I thought it would be cool to detail how I actually write my blog posts, so here goes nothing.

First, my articles are almost always 750–1,000 words. On some rare occasions I can get above 1,000 words, but that’s only when my fingers really catch fire near the end. It almost always seems to happen like that, by the way.

Oh yeah, and my blog posts are almost always finished within an hour. You might look at me and think that’s crazy, but I swear on anything it’s true.

Here’s why I like writing shorter posts almost every day rather than one longer, more polished post every week.

I’m Not That Kind Of Writer

I love longer, well-researched articles as much as anybody. I have a lot of respect for writers who take the time to edit, research, and put the absolute best article forward that they could every time.

But that style is not for me. It’s not that writing like the Flash is better, because I actually don’t believe that to be the case — it’s just that I know myself, and if I spent more than two hours at a keyboard per writing session, I’d get bored.

I wish I had a longer attention span.

So the first point is that I know myself, and I don’t try to be anybody else when it comes to my own style.

I Don’t Like Details

I’m a big-picture kind of a person. I don’t enjoy lassoing up every small grammatical mistake or beating down every small gap in my arguments. Yes, my article suffers because of this, but to be honest..

If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.

And if I’m wrong to the point that I need to seriously re-evaluate my take on the subject, I’ll hear about it in the comments.

I care about a correct premise mostly. If I use the wrong word here or there, that doesn’t matter that much to me because the audience has 1,000 other words for context. After publishing 500 blog posts online, I’ve found the audience, most of the time, understands what I MEANT even though I may have used the wrong word here or there.

And while I believe great writers has an impeccable eye for detail, I never claimed to be a great writer. I’m not Stephen King. I don’t want to be. I just want to share my thoughts with you, the audience, in written form online.

I Write For Therapy

I write to get things out of my system. Most days I sit down to write and it’s like turning on a faucet. The words pour out of my fingers. That’s because I’m writing to get something off of my chest.

I’m writing to pull something from my brain, make sense of it, then forget about it.

Whether or not it’s perfect doesn’t matter as much to me. What matters is what it did for my own psyche.

I Like Accomplishing Something Every Day

When you hit the publish button, you achieved something. You created something, edited it, and posted it for the world to see.

It’s tangible.

Yes, writing for 4 hours per day without publishing is just as big of an accomplishment as writing for one hour and hitting the publish button. However there’s something that feels really good about seeing a newly published article.

There’s something final about it that I really like and it’s an addiction I haven’t been able to shake since 2016.

It Keeps Me Accountable

Deadlines are amazing for me. When I put “Write one blog post” on my daily to-do list, my writing brain enters into this sort of killer mindset. I have a target, I have a deadline, and I work like hell to get it done.

I like results. Maybe that’s my American, as-patient-as-a-two-year-old mindset shining through. So every day I get a result, and the deadline keeps me accountable to get it done.

I need the deadline, or else I’d get lost in the process.

I Like Testing Out A Bunch Of Topics

Publishing often is like firing off a shotgun while publishing once per week is like firing off a sniper rifle. The latter goes farther for sure, but the shotgun approach helps me test certain topics and jump from post to post quickly.

My patient-as-a-two-year-old brain appreciates that.

I have a little more freedom and each day I get a different challenge. That keeps things fresh and interesting for me.

Basically, I Just Don’t Have The Patience

I sacrifice a lot with my approach, I know. I have some friends who wrote one article per week and they made 2–3 times as much money on Medium than I did.

And that’s okay. I will sacrifice the money for the enjoyment. I enjoy writing.

But that’s just my process, and I strongly encourage everyone reading to find their own. Whether that’s one post per week, or maybe even one post per two weeks, or 5–10 blog posts per week!

I hope you find the right process for you! :)