Update on Writing an Article a Day Challenge
I’ve realised in the last few days that I’m starting to regret my commitment to posting an article each day for 30 days. It takes me much longer to think of ideas for articles than it used to, articles that are of reasonable length, and are within my existing pool of knowledge, where I have decent experience applying the ideas involved.
A lot of the things I want to write about are quite large and complex topics that wouldn’t fit in a reasonable article length (reasonable in this case meaning less than 3000 words). So, I want to start writing series of articles on specific areas such as learning, productivity, purpose, meaning, etc. Alternatively, I could write them as courses for a different place on the website rather than as a series of blog articles.
Writing a series of blog articles on a topic would have the benefit of directing new readers to the site, as they will be freely available articles which people can share. But writing them as a course would probably make it more closed-off while allowing me to require some sort of price for access to it. This could be as simple as just handing over an email address or a small amount of money. Making it a course also has the benefit of making readers invest more into it, so people are more likely to engage with the material more and are more likely to learn from it. Doing both for one topic doesn’t seem like a good idea, as there would be a considerable amount of overlapping material.
I’ll probably write my first series sometime within the next month, and I’ll then decide whether I should alter it to be a course or publish it as a series of blog posts. It will be on the process of learning, looking at optimal learning strategies, techniques, practices, and optimal frame of mind. I was considering writing an article on the process of learning today, and while planning it, the plan kept on growing in size, and I thought that there was way too much to fit into a single article; the amount of content would be similar to a small book. I also want more time to gain more considerable experience applying the principles I will write about, so I know what I’m doing to a greater extent.
I’ve learned a lot about the difficulties of writing during the last 15 days of writing articles for the blog; mainly the challenge is coming up with ideas for articles that I know enough about and that are of reasonable length, while also providing as much value as possible to readers. Will I stop my commitment to writing an article a day for 30 days? No. I’ve made the commitment to myself and published it publicly, I am not going to fail due to some unforeseen difficulties down the road. I know that I really want to write about noteworthy article topics over a few days or a week, rather than spending too long thinking about whether writing an article on a given topic is going to fit in this day. That can come later on, but for now, I’ll still try and force myself to be more creative and keep up the pressure, to challenge myself to become more creative and write better articles.
This article was written just before midnight, after spending around four hours thinking about what to write about next and realising that most ideas were either going to take too long, or I didn’t think I knew enough about them. I am determined to push forward and not let these difficulties stop me, nor impair the quality of the articles I write.