A long time ago I made a decision to do at least one post per day on weekdays. I’m not sure where I pulled that figure from, probably because it lined up nicely with the fact I had absolutely nothing to do at the time whilst at work, but after about 6 months habit took over and I was then compelled to write at least once a day. The only sure fire way I’ve found to break myself out of this loop is to be on holiday somewhere, although should that holiday go over a weekday I’ll still have that niggling little voice in the back of my head telling me I should post something. In fact I’d say that it’s obsessive compulsive disorder that drives a good chunk of posts on here, it’s now such a part of my morning ritual that not getting one out can seriously impact my productivity.
My general process for finding something to write about is pretty fixed. Most of the time I simply troll my feed reader looking for something good to write about, usually something that I can either find a core theme to expand upon or a topic in which I believe I’ve got some interesting background information. Having a rather large backlog of posts means I’ve probably hit on a topic before and apart from topics where I’ve changed my position on something (like say cloud computing) there’s no good reason to go back and revisit it. Often this process ends up with me rifling through thousands of post titles, hoping to hit on that one that triggers the writer in me to plonk down a good 600+ words.
I also have a sizable backlog of drafts and post ideas that I’d love to do but simply don’t have the time or haven’t done the preparation for. Many of these are long form works that would require a whole day just to research and formulate properly. That’s not to say these will never get written indeed many of them do, but they sometimes feel to be more harmful than helpful to the whole writing process since I’ll often procrastinate trying to find something to write about by digging through them in the hopes they’ll trigger another idea (which they do not, 99% of the time).
Inspiration then is a tricky thing, as whilst it appears to strike me in some form most days it’s often preceded by hours of trawling, researching and screaming inside my head. To be honest I attribute this to trying to shit when I don’t have to go as really I shouldn’t try to force myself to write when I don’t have anything good to say. I’d probably do that too if the posts I write on those days weren’t the ones that get me positive comments (how that works I’ll never know) and it seems that if I go more than my usual 2 day break on the weekend Google likes to punish me by dropping me down a couple notches, thereby reinforcing my OCD habit of needing to do it every weekday.
Still for all my whinging about the difficulty in finding inspiration for things to post on here I still very much enjoy the whole process once I get it rolling. There are also a whole bunch of posts that come along quite easily (like my reviews) and it seems that no matter how stuck I get eventually something will eventually trigger in my head that will lead me to posting something here. Like any endeavor its not always rainbows and flowers but the rewards I’ve reaped from blogging (both real and intangible) far outweigh the costs of doing so, and I know that the work I do is appreciated.
At least some of the time anyway 😉
