Today is the last day of my two-week blogging series. I’m really happy with the results! I set out to write a post every weekday for two weeks, and ended up with 11 posts in 14 days (I wrote an extra on a Saturday). I haven’t blogged this much in years and years, and it was a learning experience.

I’ve learned that:

… I can write a blog post more quickly than I predicted.

I started using a time tracker on my laptop to keep track of the time I was spending on all of my projects. It’s been a total eye-opener. I’ve discovered that I can produce an entire blog post, including editing and configuring back matter (i.e. adding pictures and tags) in about 35 minutes. That’s less time than I thought. It makes the process seem much more do-able on a regular basis. It’s easy to find 35 minutes in a day if you keep searching for pockets of time.

….I can generate ideas every day. 

One of the caveats to writing quickly is that I have to sit down with an idea in mind, and preferably the first sentence, too. This also went more easily than I expected, because I got into the habit of looking for post ideas throughout the day. Only once did I sit down on empty and fear that I wouldn’t find anything to write. That was on the Tuesday after Easter, when I’d just had a horrendous night with my daughter. I was exhausted. So I wrote about being exhausted and the choice it forced me to make. It wasn’t my most creative post, but it still worked.

…Writing quickly is really, really good for me.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this series was to kick-start my writing. And wow, it really worked! I proved to myself that I write best when I write quickly. I crank out a draft, do some brief editing, then post it. If I don’t allow myself to self-edit on the go, the product is actually better because the creativity keeps flowing. I’m going to make “drafting quickly” a key component of my process going forward. I feel as though I’ve found my writing tempo.

…Blogging makes me happy.

I worried that this project was going to stress me out, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. I LOVED doing these short pieces. Blogging seemed to be keeping me on track with my novel as well– I’m in the research/character development phase, which means not much active writing, but using my writing muscle on blogging has given me the patience for intensive researching and outlining. Last week I spent 8.5 hours on writing projects. That’s huge for me! And I didn’t feel like I was spending all my time writing, or neglecting either my teaching job or my family. It proves, once again, that passion feeds itself.

Sadly, I also learned that…

…Blogging doesn’t pay off.

My website stats for the last two weeks have barely risen, despite how much extra time I’ve put into the blog. The series did not help me attract more readers. That wasn’t my objective, but I’m still sad that it didn’t happen. Maybe blogging really is dead for most people. If it is, I’m ok with that. I still have a wonderful, loyal group of readers. I still love reading blogs myself! But I did learn that if I want to self-promote– for example, when I start working toward a book launch– I’m going to need to put more effort into other media.

What happens next?

The next phase of my spring goals is to take what I’ve learned from two weeks of blogging and turn it into another two weeks of writing short pieces every day. This time, I’ll be writing “micro memoir,” short personal essays. I want to keep working quickly and producing content that I will polish and edit later. I’d like to have a more essays published in 2018.

I think this next stage will be harder, because I’m not going to have the accountability of posting every day. I’m hoping that won’t slow me down. Maybe I should post on my Facebook page every evening, telling my WFTS readers what I wrote about. Would anyone be interested in reading that?