One this I like about this post is how each point is tied in with the over all goal of making it easier for all of us to blog. Thanks.

I’ve been struggling lately to have written as much as I’d like to write. I’ve been wanting to do more guest posting, but it’s been difficult enough to keep up with my own blog.

A couple of your methods hit home with me, especially the scarecrow method. It’s something I have used in the past, but had forgotten how helpful it can be to get a post written quickly. I’ll have to get back to it.

It is so tempting when writing in the editior to just hit publish.
but i found that my long articles are better when i wait.

These are all great suggestions, but your point #5 (Change the format) resonated the most with me.

I think you are absolutely right about using a Word doc as a storage space for your content. Doing that also addresses your four other points.

I have Word docs set up until May 2008 right now. Every time I see or hear of a piece that I’d like to expand upon, I go inside one of the coming months and put in a head line and a couple of lines of text (whatever comes to mind as an initial draft).

By doing that, I never run out of content so I don’t really suffer from writers block and it also means that I can revise my copy when my heard is clear and not just before posting.

The other reason I do this is because I employ the services of an editor and she reviews all my Word docs before I start cutting them into posts that I’ll publish.

I quite like working with Word docs…I’m using the same approach magazines do.

Now, if there is a VERY timely topic, then I will create a quite post (still in Word) and then post it!

Also, when you say to write shorter posts… another solution is to write the long post and then cut it into chucks of 300-400 words…that way you automatically double your content.

I’ve had some posts that were so long and difficult to explain that I ended up cutting the post into 4 digestible pieces…so that was extra content for me and an easier read for my visitors/readers.

Thanks Darren.

Gisele
http://www.mybeautymatch.com

No matter how many articles explain the details, there is always room for more.

One thing I’m surprised is not on the list (maybe it is in comments already) is also keeping a queue of posts ready to go out so you are not writing content and publishing the same day. Anything I post is generally at least a week old from publishing it with a scheduled post so I have plenty of time to reread and think about it before it actually goes live. This works great for a series of posts as well since you can link between and get some consistency between the posts before it goes public.

I especially like #1 and #4.

I wanted to move to an offline editor for my posts, but didn’t find something suitable. MarsEdit was the closest, but still not quite there; sometimes I type my posts in a text editor. People need to be careful using a word processor to write posts – they can introduce weird characters when it’s copied into the blog’s editor.

I did try these ones out before commenting, cause they seemed too simple to make a difference. It is amazing how much difference they did !

Thumbs up for Skellie

@ Paul: Posts vary from about 700 – 1,500 words. I started off writing a little less but these days write 1,000 to 2,000 words most days. If you don’t consider that prolific, I’m impressed! I’d love to hear your tips on the subject.

That’s a good amount of content, which is about where I expected it to be, I just don’t consider it to be prolific is all. I’d call it somewhere in the middle with prolific being up in the 3000-4500 range on a daily basis. I’ve met people that can produce up in that range and it’s quite impressive, though not terribly important since quality wins out over quantity in everything except television.

It is, however, not even the very top which is a very reserved space.

As for tips? I’m not one to ask, I write against every mold I’ve ever encountered. I don’t use outlines, treatments, or notes of any kind when I write scripts. I don’t break things down by topic or theme for essays and editorials, and my only goals and methods for blogging is get it out as fast as possible so the tendency to think doesn’t get in the way.

The key to production for any kind of writing is finding what makes you comfortable, not what makes you fast – as one typically follows the other. By its very nature, that’s not something you can summarize and teach because everybody has a different way of getting into their comfort zone.

I’m not raining on your methods by any means – they obviously work for you and they’ll undoubtedly work for many others since my own observation here isn’t exclusionary. People should try anything and everything they can find, just as long as they realize there’s a point after which you’ve got to stop reading about doing something, and just do it.

Here’s an example of what I mean: In #3 you talk about “taking your foot off the brake” to increase productivity, which is a good thing, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problem people have, which is self-confidence. “Getting to the bottom is the most important thing” isn’t going to alleviate their fear that what they’ve written sucks; it’s just shifting that apprehension a half-hour or an hour into the future.

What I’d suggest is for people to think about the cause of that apprehension a little bit, because understanding it can make it go away. People tend to think about how they’ve written before and how they’ve seen something so obvious and horrifying that they could have so completely fixed it, had they spent another ten seconds thinking about it first.

That apprehension makes them gun shy, and they tend to try to make every sentence perfect as a result.

Sturgeon’s Law is an informal name for the adage “90% of everything is crap”. Applied here, people think back to that one paragraph that should have stayed buried and obsess over it with every new paragraph they write, rather than appreciating that the remaining 90% of what they are writing right now is going to turn out just fine.

Understanding things like that will make you more comfortable by knowing that: (a) only one tiny block of this entire text will suck (generally), and that; (b) you can’t do a darn thing about it while you’re writing it.

Perhaps for some, this is just equivalent to semantics, but I disagree. Using tricks to help you keep moving forward is a good place to start, but not as good as simply finding what puts you at ease. As a bit of physical psychology, talent and success tend to follow naturally from people who are comfortable with what they are doing.

Just my two cents.