Tag: 10DaysBetterBlog

Patterns

I am taking part in an free online course to improve my writing and blogging skills. Today’s writing prompt is Write a post about what you discovered regarding your writing patterns and behaviour. What surprised you?

John asked a number of important questions that I'm not sure I know how to answer.

I do want you to write today though and it doesn't have to be much: Write a post about what you discovered regarding your writing patterns and behaviour. What surprised you? What was rewarding and revealing? What didn't you like about what you learned about yourself? And, what pruning activities did you begin and hope to continue to do over the course of this year?

And, perhaps most importantly... what will you be writing about now with all of this new information about your historical writing patterns? Will you continue as you were previously or will you be writing about new content... and why?

My self-hosted WordPress blog only has five categories -- General, Photography, Pressgram (a subcategory of Photography), Reviews and Tutorial. A few years ago I had many more but after analyzing what I had been posting about I settled on just having these few. Looking at all of my posts over the years it seems that most of my posts have been in the General category and Photography categories with tutorials and reviews a distant third. Frankly, I think I have written more tutorials than indicated. A few years ago I consolidated several blogs into one and I may have assigned most of the imported posts to the General category. I know that in my early years of blogging I wrote most technical articles but that in most recent years photography has become a passion for me. I started posting more images to the blog, usually accompanied by some sort of story. A lot of the images were from my Nikon DSLR but a fair number were also from my iPhone. I think the launch of Pressgram had a lot to do with that.

Table
Blog Categories. Pressgram is a subcategory of Photography.

I stopped using Google Analytics a while ago due to privacy issues. It really creeps me out how easy it is to use Google's free tools but not realize how much access you give them to your data. Quite frankly, I think Google is evil so I have reduced, as much as I can, the amount of exposure I have to their products and services. I've come to rely on the statistics provided via the Jetpack plugin from WordPress.com. I took a look at the data for the last few years and saw some interesting patterns emerge. These aren't patterns about my writing behaviour but about the website reading traffic.

Chart
Page Views

My blog received more page views in the years prior to 2012. Page views are down 50%. Is that because I blogged less or because my content was less well received? I don't know.

Visitors to the web site spiked in 2013 and then dropped off by about 50% in 2014. What happened there? In 2012, the Raspberry Pi computer was released. There was a lot of buzz around the RPi. I managed to get my hands on one and wrote a blog post about my success in using it to control my Nikon DSLR for HDR photography. That post was linked to by a number of online magazines including spiegel.de and wired.com. That generated a lot of inbound traffic and even to this day that article in the number one ranked article.

Chart
Number of unique visitors

Based on the comments it seems that the tutorial posts generate the most amount of conversation.

Chart
Reader interactions

I still have to dig deeper but I think that I will continue with my current patterns of posts. I like writing posts with tips to address the questions that I am often asked by family and friends. I will continue to do that. I will continue to post my photographs to the blog. I have accepted into the Arcanum and I want to document my journey as an apprentice.

I want to post on a more regular schedule. I developed some momentum at the end of 2014 and I want to carry that into 2015. I also want to either blog more about my personal insight on photography and technology or incorporate more of my personal insights into my photography and technical articles. That will be a challenge for sure and I am concerned about being vulnerable.

Time to go do some pruning (of tags).

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Writing at 160 beats per minute

I'm not sure what my optimal writing environment is or should be because I have not put much thought into it. I know that when I am in the zone doing what feels like excellent work, a few things create my environment. It's a combination of music, coffee, good sleep, and the quiet of the early weekend morning.

During the week, the demands of commuting to and from a full-time consulting project account for most of my time. To function at my best, I want to get a good night's sleep. I get paid to think and solve problems for my client. I won’t do an adequate job if I’m tired due to a lack of sleep. I also noticed that my diabetes management worsens when I don’ get enough sleep. This means getting into bed early, preferably by 10 PM, so that I can catch at least 8 hours of restful sleep. There are some very negative consequences1 to be getting less than those 8 hours of sleep on a consistent basis so getting up earlier is just not an option for me. By the time I get home at 6 PM, my mind is spent, so I find that I do my worst writing at night.

I do most of my writing on the weekend. I write early in the morning, before my two kids and my wife wake up. This is anytime between 7 AM and 10 AM on the weekend. I won't get up earlier than 6 AM and lose sleep to get things done. Writing early in the morning is the best time for me. That's when my mind is the freshest. As soon as my family wakes up, the distractions start. Even if I put up a giant flag and a banner saying "Keep away! In the zone!”, I will still get interrupted.

I sit in a comfortable office chair and desk we purchased at IKEA a few years ago. It's worn from use, but I love its nicks and scratches. It has adjustable height legs, and I spent about an hour finding just the right height. For me, the desk is distraction-free. There are a few desk ornaments and at least two unfinished electronic projects on the side but nothing that would distract me from writing.

I keep the lights off in the "writing" room. It's not that I need a dark room to focus. It's just that I dislike artificial light. I'm a sun-worshipper. I would be happy if every day could be like late spring/early summer. The early morning sunlight coming through the window is enough to light the room in the summer. In the winter, I turn on a desk lamp. I do the least amount of writing in the winter.

I'm the coffee drinker in the house. Coffee helps me get started. It gets my brain going. No coffee. No thinking. Every morning I brew exactly two servings of coffee. One for my wife and me. She likes her coffee with cream and sugar. I drink mine black with a packet of Monk Fruit in the Raw.

I write while listening to music. I have an iTunes playlist of my favourite trance music tracks. It's the same playlist I use when driving on long trips or writing code. I have two; one is called Aural Opium1 and the other Brain. Something about trance music helps block out all distractions and focuses my mind. Most of the music is by Armin Van Buren, but the playlist includes music by Tiesto and Deadmau5. Sometimes I’ll fire up Spotify and play anything from the State of Trance. Fifteen minutes into my playlist, I'm in the zone. Sometimes I get into such a deep trance that time and place cease to exist for me. If it all works well, I notice the words (or code) on the page, my thoughts and nothing else. It's as though the writing app, the words and I are one. No other kind of music will work. I've tried to chill out to jazz, classical, top 40, etc. They don't work for me when writing (or driving). Trance music works.

I use the same headphones while I write. A worn pair of Grado SR60 open-back headphones. They fit comfortably over the ear and are not heavy. Once the music starts and I get into the groove of writing, I don't notice them.

I have do-not-disturb turned on on my iMac until 8 AM. I want to avoid any distracting updates from Twitter or Facebook etc. I love my social media, but it’s a time suck. With the best of intentions, I will pop into Google+ or Twitter for a quick update and quickly lose 30 minutes. Closing down notifications on all devices is essential. I have the same setup on my iPhone and iPad.

On the iMac, I open my writing app. I have several of these, including Byword, Desk, and MarsEdit. Why so many? Byword is the most distraction-free writing app I have. It’s just a blank canvas for my Markdown text. It’s also the only one of these apps with an iOS version and iCloud sync. I can start a post on my iMac and finish it up on my iPad. But it’s not very good for a post that involves a large number of images. The steps to get images uploaded from Byword to WordPress are too complicated. Byword doesn’t allow editing of existing posts, so I don’t dear hit publish until I am sure I’m ready. It’s best for spell-checked text-only posts. Desk is better at handling graphics and images and text together. However, sometimes Desk puts too much HTML around my text and images. It’s also the only editor that can format a post for Facebook. So I mostly use Desk when I write posts with mostly text with one or two images. MarsEdit is clunky and quite frankly the GUI isn’t modern or attractive. It has the least distraction-free environment. However, it does offer easier and faster control over image sizing, and it’s the only one of the three that provides an actual preview of how the blog post will look. This is my default writing tool for most of my photography posts.

To avoid the temptation to launch other apps, I will run the writing app in full-screen mode. No email apps. No browser. Just the writing app.

Then I start.

I am taking part in a free online course to improve my writing and blogging skills. Today’s writing prompt is “optimal writing environment".

  1. I sometimes get vertigo. I’ve seen many otolaryngology (Ear, Nose & Throat) specialists and had many tests over the last few years, but the doctors can’t pinpoint the issue. There are many types of vertigo. I do notice, however, that a consistent lack of sleep or stress triggers it. ↩
  1. I've never done any illegal drug, but I imagine that what I feel when I listen to trance might be close to an addicts' high. I'm most likely wrong. ↩

Why I Blog

I'm beginning to define and explore the thorny question of why I write and why I want to become a better writer. Here are some of my initial and incomplete thoughts (inchoate) about the why.

I started blogging circa 2001. I think it had something to do with my employment status at the time. I had consulted for several years doing web development and systems integration for large enterprises in the area. Just after the September 11 attacks, and only a week after moving into our new home, my client cancelled several projects, including mine, and I found myself with a lot of time on my hands. I thought that perhaps blogging about technical topics would keep me sharp while I looked around for new employment opportunities.

I messed around with Radio Userland and several other platforms, including Blogger, but it wasn't until shortly after WordPress was released that I found myself putting effort into blogging.

I plugged away at it. I watched as the page views grew. I deluded myself into thinking I could make money1 blogging and the focus of my content changed. My blog content increasingly became a technology tutorial. Then I was bitten by the photography, and I started posting images online. Circa 2006, I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and started writing about my life with diabetes. I split my blog into three blogs - technology, photography and diabetes.

A few years ago, I lost my passion for it. I didn’t want to write anymore. It wasn't fun, and I suspect I was being sucked in by social media portals like Facebook and Twitter while also losing my authentic voice. I was writing for the reader, for the audience, for the click. I was no longer writing for me.

I consolidated all my blogs into this one, Island in the Net, and changed my focus. My blog would be me. I write on this blog because I want to share the jumble of ideas I have in my head. I want to share my photographs to show you the way I see the world. I blog because I want a record of me.

I am taking part in a free online course to improve my writing and blogging skills. Today’s writing prompt is “Why do I write (or blog)".

  1. Most of that was to cover the cost of hosting, but the blog turned a profit one year. ↩