Demystifying My Post Writing

Most of the time, my new posts are published right around 1:45 or 2pm, corresponding with the end of my lunch at work. Sometimes I’ll tweet about them saying “Lunchtime blog post:…” but truth is, it’s highly unlikely that I just wrote it over my 30 minute lunch. It’s more likely that I started them during lunch a few days before, finished them up that night or the next day, then gave them a final once over during lunch the day I post them. Exchange “lunch” for “after work,” “during a break,” “at work” or “when the idea struck me” and you have the process of most successful bloggers out there.

The idea for a post may come at any moment, and very few are time-sensitive. If I can’t lay fingers to keyboard right then, I’ll try to jot down a few notes to come back to when I have time. Once I’ve written something, I generally go back and reread it multiple times over hours or days, editing all along the way. Sometimes I’ll start a post then let it sit unfinished for a couple weeks, usually because I don’t like where it’s headed, and end up rewriting it.

I’ve actually heard people say that grammar and spelling don’t matter in blogs. They’re idiots. No, seriously; I think that they are complete morons (and likely completely lazy, trying to excuse their lack of skill with language). It matters. It bothers me when I find a silly grammatical mistake glaring at me when I reread my content that has gone live. I edit, and edit and edit. And reread to the point that I miss the mistakes because I’m so familiar with my content. And the editing isn’t just copy editing. I trim down things, expand on others, clarify, rewrite and rehash.  That’s what writers do. Bloggers are writers. I’m a writer (some days).

Sometimes I’ll have a few posts queued up to publish when I have dry spells for other content. Bloggers that make money do that. They might have a month or more posts sitting in queue so that they can stay ahead of the game. I’m not at that level, but I also have a full time job and myriad hobbies, so limited blog post writing time. For them it is a full time job. Also, it’s a lot more interesting for my readers, I’m sure, to see a new post every couple of days rather than three posts a day then none for two weeks.

So this post, although I’m calling it a lunchtime blog post, was actually written a few days ago at lunch. And then reread over the weekend. And then edited a slight bit more today before I hit the “publish” button and started distributing the link. In fact, I just had to add the ‘l’ to publish, because I didn’t realize I mistyped before.

Maybe calling it a lunchtime post isn’t the most truthful thing out there, but hey, it was published during lunchtime, so I’m sticking to it.

Do you blog? What’s your posting process?