I was reading Liz‘s excellent post the other day on ‘slow blogging’ and some things she said really struck a chord. Trying to find a schedule that works for a blog can be tricky, when you have to squeeze it in amongst Real Life, work, family and so on. There’s always something else to do, somewhere else to be.
Take tonight[1], for example – by the time the kids are in bed, the dishwasher loaded, the house straightened up, school and work stuff sorted for the morning, it’s half ten and all I really want to do is slump in front of Game of Thrones (OMG HOW GOOD? Two more episodes! WOE!) with a large mug of jolly hot tea and maybe a snackerel of something tasty and highly calorific.
I’ve sometimes wondered if this blog could do with a proper schedule – regular readers (well done for keeping up, you’re all lovely people) may have noticed that I tend to blog in little flurries at various times of the day and week. This is usually down to me trying to be clever (stop laughing at the back) and scheduling a bunch of posts spread out during the week. Of course, then I promptly forget I’ve done this, and schedule a bunch more, or spot something on the way into work which requires immediate sharing with the world (I have a post brewing about a solar-powered bin I spotted this morning. More of that later).
And thanks to the joys of mobile internet (and good coffee shops), one can quite happily blog at lunchtimes, on the train, in the post office queue…
So I end up with some carefully-scheduled posts, some not-quite-so-carefully-scheduled posts, and some utterly random posts all jostling for position and attention. Some of these come with automatic twitter postings too, which result in a bombardment on social media. Though oddly, not Facebook. But there’s another post waiting to happen.
See? They’re like rabbits, these blog posts. Take your eye off ’em for a second…
Then I got a lovely comment over on the ‘My first job‘ post from Ofglassandbooks
Loved this post You should write more often and longer posts, dear Espresso coco, although I do like the pictures too
Perhaps I should take the slow blogging advice and work on one (or two) longer-form posts each week, interspersed with the photos and the hodge-podge of shorter stuff.
What do you think, dear reader? Slow and steady, or all higgledy-piggledy brace-yourself-he’s-off-again?
[1] though I’ll probably schedule this for autoposting tomorrow morning. Which will be this morning when you read it. Or even tomorrow evening. Time travel is confusing. Speaking of time travel OMG DOCTOR WHO! HOW GOOD WAS THAT? *cough* sorry.
Related articles
- Slow Blogging (margot-and-barbara.com)
espresso coco 
Isn’t there room for both? Slow and steady and planned when you want to be thoughtful and pensive about something, AND higgledy-piggledy brace-yourself-he’s-off-again spur of the moment oh-gosh-something’s-just-inspired-me posts? After all, people can dip in and out and choose to read or not read as fits their lifestyles too?
I’m sure there is, and I’m fairly sure I’ll never actually change! I do quite like doing longer posts though, so might try and schedule in a couple of these a week amongst all the other gubbins.
🙂
I suppose it depends on why you blog. Because you enjoy it, or for world domination?
I’ve read the advice to schedule posts at a regular fairly constant frequency but with the average reader following many blogs, I don’t think many notice anyway and then it’s always a good suprise when one of your favourite bloggers pops up in your reader.
Write and schedule when you fancy and maintain your enjoyment of it.
I definitely prefer the randomness mixed in with the longer posts, even if it just to remind us you’re out there still observing.
Thanks Lucie. It’s mainly because I enjoy it, but I do love it when I write something that catches someone’s eye enough for a retweet or gets linked to from somewhere. Similarly with the WordPress ‘likes’ – it’s all well and good when people click on like, but it’s the comments and conversations that come up that I really enjoy.
At the end of the day, I’d probably still do this even if no-one was watching! I just enjoy the art of creating something. 🙂
Agreed.
The comment included ‘although I do like the pictures too.’ I like your higgledy piggledy blog the way it is. By all means do longer posts if you feel like it, but just to confuse you further – I didn’t comment on your My First Job post, because, although it was well written, it didn’t interest me enough at a time when I was busy.
Not every post will interest everyone, of course. I’m glad you like my higgledy piggledy blog though 🙂
Delighted I triggered more writing from you!
Also, I deeply and whole heartedly sympathise with the whole life juggling business.
As I’m writing this comment, my two kids are running wild instead of going to bed. Me, secretly blogging; them stealing our mobiles to take a picture of one of them with all her hair on her face, pretending it’s the back of her head, laughing hysterically and bumping against any hard piece of furniture around….
higgledy piggledy, chaotic, planned, erratic, nonsensical, nostalgic, silly, long winded, deep, …whatever, as long as you write. One of your best was the request for a title of a Lego little man…I’ve said it all.
Better stop the hairy, faceless head from running around or I’ll ground myself from using the family lap top.
Hello! Glad that my post got you thinking. Like you, I may never change the way I blog – but it’s good to take a breath and think about it sometimes. I do love the jumble of things and posts in your blog. Because I love your writing, I’d like to see the occasional long-form piece – it’d be interesting to see if it works for you.
It’ll be interesting to try and see how it turns out – my longer blog posts have been mostly unintentional, and just a regular one which got out of hand!
Well there’s no Game of Thrones on Monday, so that should free some time up; though I’m not sure how I’m going to cope with the 2 week break!!