How I blog

I write words into WordPress and set a date to schedule them for publishing. End of story, right? Well, not quite.

Writing has been an outlet for me for a number of years. The vast majority of all I write is never published, and most is deleted without another thought. What becomes a blog post depends on what takes my fancy. It may be some small annoyance in my everyday work, or a problem a user has encountered. It may be related to my studies, to something that has occurred in the world, or it might come from a book or an article I have read.

Whatever the case might be, whenever an idea hits me, I make a note of it. If I am at a computer, I’ll usually enter it into a notepad document or a similar solution (and sometimes straight into WordPress). If I’m out and about, a notebook will usually be the place it goes (one of the reasons why I always carry pen and paper), or it may go on my phone. 

Some ideas lie in my queue for ages and ages before either becoming obsolete (such as tips and tricks in Windows XP), or the fancy strikes me and I develop the idea from a kernel (Strong encryption legal in perpetuity) to a finished blog post. At other times, as was the case with this post, the idea struck, and I had it written within fifteen minutes. My favorite way to develop an idea, however, is with a pen and paper. I go through two to three refills of ink per year – at least half of it spent on blog post development.

There is something about the feel of a good pen, which helps me write fluidly and freely. Sometimes, I will type up a post, word for word, as I drafted it by pen, and other times what I at the time felt was a fully fleshed out post gets a major rewrite (sometimes even becoming a series of posts, rather than just the one I thought I was writing. Regardless of if I am writing on paper, or typing into software of some kind, there are tricks I use to ensure that I include things, such as TK.

At any rate, once a draft has been written and polished to become a post, I add links and the occasional illustration, schedule a posting date, and forget about the post until it shows up on the front page.