Daily blogging reflections

And what I'm writing about next

I recently completed a 30-day daily blogging experiment. From Nov 22 to Dec 21, I published something nearly every day (missed 3 days total). Here’s what I learned:

Some stuff is gonna be bad

It’s hard to have an interesting idea every day, let alone write about one well daily. There is value is forcing yourself to publish mid content. It removes a very large and looming potential excuse that your mind likes to use.

Not having anything interesting to write about shouldn’t stop you from writing. An interesting take on writer’s block I came across recently is comparing it to weightlifting. Some days, the weight moves around easier. Other days, it might feel unusually heavy. But to say you have “weightlifting block” as an excuse for not lifting the weight would be ridiculous. Try harder, or lower your standards for your writing.

Short vs long form

Before the experiment, most of my writing was in the 800-2000 word range. Transitioning to daily ~200 word posts gave me some new perspectives. I definitely enjoy being able to quickly get thoughts out into the world. Even before the experiment, I was playing around with the idea of a separate type of post called “notes” which would be shorter, less edited writing.

Many topics die in the writing process because I’m not satisfied with the quality, or because I don’t feel I have enough to say. Shorter posts remove both of these pressures and let me share more things.

However, as I wrote about here, one fear I have is that short pieces will become a crutch that prevent me from diving deeper into topics. I definitely want to keep writing long form pieces. If anything, this year I’d like to explore even longer pieces (2500+ words) and publish some storytelling/investigative journalism style pieces.

I’m not sure what my writing will look like moving forward, outside the longer pieces I plan to try out. I’m guessing those will take a lot longer to write, so it might be worth using shorter pieces to fill the interim.

It feels good to publish

Something unexpected was how much I actually looked forward to writing my daily blog post. I thought it would be more like a chore, but it was actually something to look forward to most days. Part of it was incorporating writing into my routine in a fun way—I would usually write and sip on a cup of coffee and feel like a Real Writer (this effect is exaggerated because I don’t normally drink coffee).

Publishing daily also makes the writing feel more tangible. As in, when I write longer pieces over the course of days or weeks, each individual writing session feels less concrete, and it’s unclear what I’ve accomplished. For each of the daily blogs, the start writing to publish process takes less than 30 minutes and I can clearly see the product of my time and work.

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What’s next?

Obviously, I didn’t continue the daily writing past 30 days. Part of this was because I went on vacation and didn’t have internet, but also because I’m not entirely convinced it would be worth the time and mental space.

I will probably revisit daily publishing again, but I’m not sure when. As for now, I’m working on something a little different.

Like I said, I really want to write more investigative journalism style pieces. In 2022, I rediscovered my love for storytelling. Listening to podcasts like Serial, The Trojan Horse Affair, and Reply All reminded me of the types of stories I want to tell. I wrote more here, but the basic idea is that interesting stories appear when we zoom in. Sometimes, the most fascinating ideas come from our everyday surroundings.

Currently, I’m exploring a tiny corner of the internet that no longer exists. There was a digital phenomenon—a blip in internet history—and it had a profound impact on my life and many others. Without giving away too much (or anything at all, really), a thing happened, it was weird and wonderful, but now it’s gone. I want to tell the story of that thing and why it mattered.