Austin Kleon has always talked about why daily blogging has bee so important to him as a writer. I decided to try it back in November and I finally understood what he was talking about. I’ve been going strong for 65 days straight.
Sitting down to write has gotten SO much easier. A few posts I’ve written have turned into rough drafts of chapters for the book I’m working on. And I’ve seen a HUGE spike in the number of people visiting my website.
Whenever I try to convince someone else to join me in daily blogging I always point to Austin Kleon’s post “A Few Notes on Daily Blogging” because it’s so good and he’s absolutely right.
Are all 65 of my posts incredible pieces of writing that everyone should read? No. Absolutely not. Yesterday I was so drained, in such a bad mood, and DESPERATE for something to post that I wrote about a screenshot of Shaq in a General Insurance commercial. That’s…not great. But it’s something. I’m keeping it a daily habit.
I’ve heard Conan O’Brien talk about how he’s learned to not get too obsessive about the quality of every single episode of his show. He’s doing a new one every night. That’s hundreds of shows a year. You can’t waste any time beating yourself up about a show that aired three weeks ago. You’ve got to move on and focus on the one that’s airing tonight. He says he likes to think of it like a batting average in baseball. He knows that not every show is going to be amazing but he wants to make sure they have a really high average. More good shows than bad. When you look back on the year, sure not every hit was a home run, but what’s your batting average?
I try to have the same mindset with my posts.
The other thing that was really helpful when I was starting out was Austin Kleon’s 30 Day Challenge. I used that to get through November and now the habit has stuck. Even if it’s 2 am and I’m SOOOOO tired I’ll still make sure I post something before I go to bed.
It’s a new year. Maybe daily blogging is worth trying out?