How to blog every week

Answering questions is another excuse to blog! So: my take on how to do weekly blogging. 🙂

Don’t worry about a title. Unless you really want to.

For some reason, coming up with a title was often a blocker for me when I wanted to toss a few thoughts out without a singular purpose. I was happy when I finally settled on reusing the same title week after week. It’s liberating.

Write for yourself. Except when you’re writing for someone else.

Yourself can be your current self (maybe therapeutic) or your future self (remembering, tracking progress). I’m usually writing for myself first, but I very often have one specific person in mind that I hope reads what I’m writing at any moment—and it’s okay if they don’t!

Kurt Vonnegut said “Write to please just one person.” That phrase was specifically about creative writing, but I think all writing can be considered creative.

The first version of this advice I remember seeing is Matt’s “write for only two people”. I had actually forgotten the “two people” part until just now.

Always press publish. It’s easy to think you didn’t write enough or didn’t write something perfect enough. Once you hit publish, none of that matters, it’s done and you move on to the next week.

Consistency makes it easier. Once you pass a hurdle of two or three weeks, it starts being easier to imagine pressing publish the next week too.

If you skip a week, it makes the next twice as hard. If you skip two, it can start to feel impossible again. See above: always press publish.

Always be blogging. Or, writing begets writing.

It feels good to get your thoughts written down and to do so regularly. It can be a way to clear your brain of random bits and bobs.

Once a rhythm is there, it gets easier and you’ll likely find yourself thinking of thoughts throughout the week that may be fun to have in a weekly post.

This is where it’s been very helpful to have a workflow in which a draft is easily accessible on mobile and non-mobile devices. Then it’s like an ongoing journal throughout the week and Friday morning starts to feel more like a reflective editing session.

Read your posts. As the collection grows, it’s fun to go back and look at what made its way into previous weekly posts. I’ve found plenty of gems that I completely forgot about and it can be an interesting way to reflect on the year.

I think that covers the basics!

For more examples, keep an eye out for peoples’ “week notes” or “weeknotes”. There’s a whole world of bloggers out there just plugging away week after week with lists of thoughts and things that happened. It can be fun to read an assortment, even if you’ve never met. Phil Gyford and Alice Bartlett are two consistent favorites. See also: weeknot.es.