How to write consistently
I do not consider myself an expert, but I have been blogging for more or less exactly three years now. Apart from a few minor exceptions, I have managed to publish a small article every.single.week. I am quite proud of that, even though I know that my articles are not the deepest or the longest. But that 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 started this blog in the first place. It was really just because I wanted to get into the habit of writing. I always struggled (and still do), but I thought that writing about something simple on a regular basis would help me become a more consistent writer. After all, I still want to write at least a couple of books, so I should be able to write a simple blog, right?
Well, although writing a blog is much easier, doing it every week has its difficulties. I was having a beer with some friends recently and the subject of my blog came up. I told them what I do and how I do it and thought maybe I could make a blog post out of it. Well, here we are!
Write consistently simple
So first of all: Although I write about science and what projects I do and where I travel, I have decided never to write as I would in an academic article. This is not easy at first. Maybe colleagues will read this and think I can’t write 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 films, technology, video games and archaeology, but in a readable format.
So I decided to do two things. Firstly, I didn’t want to write about anything that I had to research first. This automatically rules out typical academic articles, because I really can’t do that without a lot of effort. Secondly, I limit myself to writing a blog post in about 20 minutes. This sounds hard at first, but once you get used to it, it makes things really easy. You can plan when you want to write (e.g. when I have half an hour of free time) and you also restrict yourself a bit more.
Write consistently about my personal life
I feel uncomfortable with this, because who really cares? Well, considering my growing readership, it seems more and more people are. But it also makes writing easier, because again: I don’t have to research anything. I just write about where I went, what film I saw or what game I played (currently Baldur’s Gate 3…). However, I honestly think that academics rarely write about what they do besides their research, and I think that this can sometimes be more interesting than the research itself…
Anyway, these are basically the things I do to keep myself writing. Oh yes, I also have an automatic reminder in my to-do list every Monday to help me remember to write my weekly post. By the time I have finished and scheduled the post and can hear the releasing “ping” of a task done, I have my upcoming post in mind. I think finishing this post can only mean one thing: “ping”! 🙂
