As you are aware, I recently became a new dad to a precious little sweetie named Emma Allison Hundley. Most people with kids warned me that having kids changes your life and drains all your free time. They're not wrong: she has been a handful. But I still love her! She's super cute, and to prove so, check out the small collage of pictures below:
Anyway, knowing that my free time would be drained, I embraced the idea that I probably wouldn't be able to churn out much new content as far as blog material goes. It turns out that I was fortunately wrong! If anything, I'm putting out more new content than ever.
In thinking about my writing practices, I have developed a bit of a system where I spend less than 30 minutes actually writing each blog post. How do I get away with this? Check out my tips for efficient writing down below.
1. Consciously and consistently observe life. I have never specifically set aside time to think about new topics for blog posts. This is partly because I used to try writing papers this way in undergrad and found myself getting super frustrated when I couldn't think of what to write down. Rather, all my post ideas come organically from observing life in some form or fashion. (For more on this, check out this post I wrote a few months back.)
2. Pare down your observations into content you think would suffice for a single post. This often comes pretty naturally for me. If you think content will end up being a novel, try splitting it across multiple posts. If you can't think of enough content around an idea, table it until you have more information or don't share it at all. Remember that getting and keeping attention is extremely difficult these days, so shorter tends to be better!
3. Think about how you'd like to structure your posts. I structure my posts in three ways.
Anyway, knowing that my free time would be drained, I embraced the idea that I probably wouldn't be able to churn out much new content as far as blog material goes. It turns out that I was fortunately wrong! If anything, I'm putting out more new content than ever.
In thinking about my writing practices, I have developed a bit of a system where I spend less than 30 minutes actually writing each blog post. How do I get away with this? Check out my tips for efficient writing down below.
1. Consciously and consistently observe life. I have never specifically set aside time to think about new topics for blog posts. This is partly because I used to try writing papers this way in undergrad and found myself getting super frustrated when I couldn't think of what to write down. Rather, all my post ideas come organically from observing life in some form or fashion. (For more on this, check out this post I wrote a few months back.)
2. Pare down your observations into content you think would suffice for a single post. This often comes pretty naturally for me. If you think content will end up being a novel, try splitting it across multiple posts. If you can't think of enough content around an idea, table it until you have more information or don't share it at all. Remember that getting and keeping attention is extremely difficult these days, so shorter tends to be better!
3. Think about how you'd like to structure your posts. I structure my posts in three ways.
- "Listicles." Which is what this post is. Basically a bulleted / numbered list of pieces of information related to a central topic.
- Segmented headings. This is how I structure all my book reviews. I try to think of three or four ideas related to an overall post and separate them under their own heading. (Shameless plug: Check out my "AirPods vs. Powerbeats vs. Beats Solo Wireless" post at my other blog for a direct example of a segmented headings post.)
- Monologue with bolded main points. My recent post, Get Comfortable with Awkward Situations, is an example of this last type. There's a less formal structure than the first two types, but I always attempt to boldface a few key points in those posts. I also try to illustrate with some sort of example, whether from my own life or from another observation.
4. Make notes. This is not to be confused with actually writing the post itself. I have a lot of thoughts and can't get to writing everything right away, so I just make small notes to remind myself. I use Apple's default "Reminders" app to note down the high-level post ideas (Tip 2) and Apple's default "Notes" app to note down structural components for a given post (Tip 3). Currently, I have 23 backlogged post ideas for LYEATT and 13 for Engedi Artistry. So yeah. Noting stuff down is important!
5. Actually writing the post. If you follow the tips above, you'll find that writing is an absolute breeze. I write roughly 75% of my posts directly in my iPhone's "Notes" app and the later copy / paste on my MacBook for publication. This writing on my iPhone allows me to literally write from anywhere. For example, I volunteer at church a lot, and in between services I can hammer out two, three, even four posts sometimes.
And that's it. I enjoy writing and am glad that I am able to balance my time between writing and spending time with my newborn. Hope you can adapt these tips for your own writing practices!
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