Just kidding. This post is not a rant but some hopefully helpful tips.
Aside from the fact that January is an experiment (and therefore I’m posting more), I am periodically asked by slightly confused relatives and friends how I have time to blog. It’s a fair question, I do hold down a full time job with a fairly lengthy commute, produce anything from 1-14k of fiction a week, enjoy a small but reasonable social life and manage to even spend time with G. Have I perhaps discovered time travel? Or cloning? Of course not. Here’s how I do it:
1) I carry a notebook and/or smartphone with me most of the time. There’s plenty of opportunity for writing on the train, in lengthy queues and at lunchtime.
2) I keep a loose idea of the kind of posts I want to write in the week ahead.
3) I try to plan interesting things to do because that helps keep the monotony of commuting from grinding me down – I have one next weekend. Blog posts that often result are a bonus.
4) I collect interesting sites in my rss feeds and follow interesting people on Twitter.
5) I write blog posts in advance and schedule them for later in the week. For example, when this goes live I will be embroiled in a meeting with one of my colleagues from overseas but I am actually writing it whilst listening to University Challenge (I know I’m wild).
And that’s your lot for now. However, should you be in the mood for advice of a blogging/web copy nature then you should check out a proper expert rather than some gobby Taff. Futurismic’s guest blogger this week is GLP and his week long series walks you through a tried and tested model for generating effective copy. The first and second installments are here and here. The man knows his stuff.
I get asked that too. I figure once you get into the habit of doing it it becomes second nature. I can bang out a relatively decent blog in about 15 minutes. It’s like anything else, the more you practise the easier it becomes!
I think this is all lies, Neil does not in fact have a full time job, he is paid a princely sum of money by an excentric American billionaire to dress up as Barney the purple dinosaur and dance for candy treats. Thankfully the billionaire is approaching 89 years old and he can only stand this excitement for 2 hours a day, leaving Neil the other 22 to write. Neil does not sleep, and spends the majority of the money he is paid on special drugs developed by NASA to keep him awake, this is how he manages to write so much! The rest of the money he spends on shiny things for G to stop her sharing his secret with the nation – the cat’s out of the bag now!
Shame on you for lying to your loyal readers, I am glad I was here to clear this up!
I see I have been outed. Ah well, had to happen sooner or later…