Posting Less, Writing Better

Over the past year, I've written every day, posted something most of those days and looked at what it means to me.  Essentially, writing every day is a discipline and a goal that I've reached as of the beginning of the year.

Now, looking back on the year or more of daily discipline, I've noticed a few important things.  One of them is that there are some major steps to producing a publishable work.  Obviously, the prime step of sitting down and writing out an idea comes first.  Then comes the next step or steps you must take to refine work, edit and hone ideas.  That's something that has not been given enough attention in the past, and it's showing up as an annoying problem, in my mind anyway.

Some ideas or subjects are pretty quick to develop, and I'm satisfied with what ends up on the "page" here. Others I would have liked to have taken a lot more time with, and of course I still can go back and rework them.  This leads me to the next step now, which is that for the most part, I will be posting less often and developing ideas and themes to a fuller extent so that they seem more complete to me.  I want to take more time to delve into that creative space and see what can come of it.  After that, I will submit finished work for publication and see what happens.

Most, if not all, creative thinking requires a warm-up period when the mind is set to work on a task and needs to be let loose and wriggle around a bit before really hitting its stride and feeling good.  Athletes and other folks call it "the flow."  You know it when you feel it.  After some warm-up time, you feel less hesitant and more energized.  At the same time, you're less aware of the immediate surroundings and distractions that may pop up.

It's that feeling of flow that I have had not found enough time to reach.  By imposing the daily post goal, I've often rushed to use time and get something posted, whether I really was fully satisfied or not.  On the other hand, it does take me less time to write out what I want to than it used to.  The daily discipline has been excellent in that regard.

So, I will write daily but only post every other day or so.  If I hit a stretch of time when I can write for a longer period of time during the day, I may post something here more frequently, but the goal will now be for quality instead of quantity.  I hope that makes sense.

Thanks for reading, subscribing and passing my posts forward to friends.  I know quite a few people are subscribing and checking in regularly, which is cool.  I appreciate you having you as a reader, wherever you are.  Anytime you want to respond, you can do so by posting a comment or emailing me at bottaroc@gmail.com  .

A Quickie

Darn!  Ran out of time too soon.  I diverted my attention to writing my short story and have run out of time today to write anything more than a few thoughts.

I have been able to track readership of posts, a service provided by Blogger, where I compose every day.  The most curious pattern has emerged:  I have consistently had the most page views - by a long shot - on a post I wrote in 2009 called "Comments?" in which I instructed readers how to make comments. It has had five times as many hits as my other posts.  I feel a bit befuddled by that, especially since none of these "hits" has generated further comments on that post beyond the first three or four that were posted.

Also, and equally interesting to me, is the fact that readers are tuning in from far-flung places like Indonesia, Ukraine, Germany, Russia and South Korea among others.  Hello!

All I can say is I'm having a fine time writing.  It's kind of one step above talking to myself, which I do anyway, so if anyone ever comments, it feels like a surprise.

Thanks again for reading.  I hope you'll continue to enjoy it and pass it along.