How to write consistently
So I do not see myself as an expert, but I am doing this blog now for more or less exactly three years. Without some minor exceptions, I managed to publish a small article every.single.week. I am pretty proud of that, although I know my articles are not the deepest or very long. But this is part of the concept and I want to tell you all about how I write consistently.
The purpose of this blog
From time to time I mention why I actually started this blog. It was actually only, because I wanted to come into the habit of writing. I was always struggeling (and still do), but I thought writing on a regular basis about something simple will help me to become a more consistent writer. After all I still want to write at least a couple of books, so I should be able to also write a simple blog, right?
Well although writing a blog is much easier, doing it every single week has its difficulties. I was recently having a beer with some friends and my blog came up. I told them what I do and how I do it and thought maybe I can make a blog post out of this. Well, here we are!
Write consistently simple
So first off: Although I write about academia and what projects I do and where I travel, I decided to never write like I would do in an academic article. This does not come easy at first. Maybe colleagues read this and think I can’t write any better? Maybe this blog does not show my “intellectual depth”? Well maybe, but on the other hand I also wanted to write for non-academics. People who also like movies, technology, video games and archaeology, but just in a readable format.
So I decided to do two things. First, I didn’t want to write about anything that I need to research first. This automatically excludes typical academic articles, because I really can’t do that without a lot of effort. Second, I restrict myself to write a blog post in about 20 minutes. This sounds hard at first, but when you are used to this, it makes things really easy. You can plan when to write (e.g. when I have half an hour of free time) and you also restrict yourself a little bit more.
Write consistently about my personal life
This is actually something I feel uncomfortable with, because who really is interested in that? Well considering my raising reader numbers, it seems more and more people. But it also makes writing easier, because again: I do not have to research anything. I simply write about where I went, what movie I saw or what game I played (currently Baldur’s Gate 3…). I honestly think however, that academics barely write about what they do besides their research and I think sometimes this might be more interesting than the research itself…
Be that as it may, these are basically the things I do to write consistently. Oh yes, I also have an automatic reminder every Monday in my ToDo list that helps me remember my weekly post. Until I finish and scheduled the post and can hear the releaving “ping” of a task done, I have my upcoming post in mind. I think coming to an end with this post can only mean one thing: “ping”! 🙂
