Friday Notes #52 - One Year Anniversary
One year of weekly writing, without missing a beat. Can’t wait to write the next year of the Friday Notes.
The Friday Notes Series is now one year old. Started as a series of shortform posts on Medium, under the publication name Numeric Citizen Tidbits, the series seems to pass the test of time. I’m proud of all the time and efforts I have invested in writing each post. It wasn’t always easy to keep the beat rolling, though. It’s a constant challenge to find the time to think about, write and publish new content. Also, after starting my monthly newsletter, having to think about a subject, an angle, a story every week added some pressure on my other writing projects.
Some people are trying to keep writing AND publishing something every day. To them, I say bravo because I can imagine the challenge. Josh Ginter, writing on Newsprint:
Josh Ginter, writing on Newsprint:
“Writing something every day is one of those goals every writer has but may not have the fortitude to achieve. I’m no different — I’m likely going to give up on this goal in the very near future.”
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“But over time, I came to prioritize short blog posts because they were easy to publish. The shorter the post with the shorter the complete thought, the better.”
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“I have found I’m writing about half-baked ideas for the sake of writing”
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“And more than anything, I am finding my quality to be receding.”
Josh’s post deeply echoes my sentiments as a writer and content creator. I can’t count how often I felt my about-to-be-published content wasn’t ready or complete. Yet, I hit the publish button anyway. Why is that? Simply because of the pressure of keeping the lights on, the beat is rolling, the blog lively. When this happens, it’s a warning that something is wrong. The motives for writing need to be reframed.
But, then, I read the very same day, from Matt Birchler on Birchtree (emphasis is mine):
“Birchtree is 11 years old and for the first 5 years or so it got basically no traffic. Today it gets lots more traffic, but it still makes very little money (like $20-30) but I still do it because I love it. YouTube is way more relevant and way more lucrative, and it’s reasonably gotten more attention from me over the past year, but this blog isn’t going anywhere because I love it; I’ve found the things that will keep me going because I love them so much.”
This is it; my writing motive is simply because I love it. The rest should be secondary, like publishing for publishing. I should always keep in mind: is this thing ready or not? If it’s not, then, wait, if it’s ready, then hit publish!
I am hoping for another year of the Friday Notes Series.
