Ask HN: How Do You Blog?
95 points| rpastuszak | 5 years ago | reply
1. What's your process?
2. How did you start? What was hard? What was easy?
3. How do you stay motivated? Do you?
Bonus:
4. What were the struggles you had to overcome to develop a regular writing habit (e.g. shyness, self-consciousness, poor time management skills, etc...)? How did you do it?
[+] [-] h0p3|5 years ago|reply
My wiki (https://philosopher.life) started out as a non-linear letter. That seed grew into a vine and then a garden. I write every day, even when I don't want to. I talk to myself and those who matter to me (even those I've not yet met or never will). I write because the stories we tell and retell ourselves and others are objectively valuable. I consider it my moral obligation and vocation to read, think, and write.
[+] [-] Hates_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gollapalli|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] User23|5 years ago|reply
That's an interesting postulated relationship between three of the four normative sciences. You've covered logic, aesthetic, and ethic. How does rhetoric relate?
[+] [-] bobbydreamer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] satvikpendem|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] okaleniuk|5 years ago|reply
1. Fishing an idea, investigating the details, programming a sketch of interactive elements. Then writing, and fitting the explorables to the narrative. Then editing. Then editing. And then editing. Then publishing, and apologizing for all the typos, errors, and mistakes that slipped through the editing process.
2. I started writing for the university newspaper back in college and the habit stuck. The hardest part for me is writing in English. I don't have the fully developed sense of language so it's like cooking without the sense of smell. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it smells fish. I just can't tell. Programming and maintaining my own "platform" appeared to be much easier than it looks.
3. There are two great motivational powers: making people you like happy; and proving people that don't believe in you wrong.
4. In my case it was simple. When I was young, I couldn't stay doing anything regularly. Not only writing but exercising, learning, going to work, all that things. But people around me who were older didn't seem to have any trouble with that. So I just decided to get older. And I did. Eventually. Now writing and programming for the blog is just something that I do daily after work and on Saturdays.
[+] [-] palebt|5 years ago|reply
2. I had "Oh, this might be interesting for others!" moments too many times.
3. At the beginning it's easy (excitement). Then you need determination and consistency to keep doing it. I guess my list keeps growing, so I keep blogging.
4. Shyness. Imposter syndrome. Then I realised that it's fine to be wrong sometimes. Worst-case scenario is that someone will tell you it's wrong and you will learn something new.
My blog: https://www.rockandnull.com
[+] [-] hikhvar|5 years ago|reply
As the name indicates I try to run it as a public journal. I write down stuff I learned without setting me any targets. The target audience is myself. In the last years I solved a lot of problems and just forgot the details. Local Journaling tooling had a bad search. So I started the public journal to leverage the Google search.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|5 years ago|reply
1. I get fascinated by some idea, start dumping notes about it, and over time turn them into a text - often in burst sessions where I output a lot of text, and then it either goes immediately up, or (if I care more) I let it lie for a few days, and then review and edit it.
2. Back when I was a kid and was learning programming to make games, everyone in the local gamedev scene had a "dev blog", so I wanted to have one too.
3. I don't. Every now and then I feel I finally have something to write about (see point 4.), and when that feeling becomes overwhelming, I sit down and craft a post.
4. I didn't. The main struggle I have now: I feel I have nothing to write about that isn't already written much better by people much smarter than me. I don't feel the need to write for myself only - I have a folder named "mind-dumps" full of .org files, into which I stream my thoughts regularly. So if I want to publish something on my blog, I have to feel it's a contribution to the greater web of information. Curiously, I didn't have this problem as a kid - I'd just write down the things I've learned, mostly to show off to my friends who also had dev blogs and also wrote about things they've learned.
[+] [-] bitxbitxbitcoin|5 years ago|reply
One thing that I've found helps is to set aside a specific time of day or week for and to create associated habits with your writing habit.
Maybe that's writing after you take a shower in the morning or after you brush your teeth - or maybe even after brushing your teeth but before showering. Maybe it's to always eat a specific breakfast before or while you write. If you write better or more willingly while under the influence of something (i.e. caffeine, THC, CBD, alcohol) remember to do that to start a writing sesh. YMMV but any sort of Pavlovian push in the right direction can't hurt, right?
PS: A lot of my examples are morning-centric because many writers report that early morning writing is best for them.[1]
[1] https://jamesclear.com/daily-routines-writers
[+] [-] tdom|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shrutipathak|5 years ago|reply
I like https://dev.to for the same reason. There is no pay but still motivating for sure
[+] [-] mrjivraj|5 years ago|reply
I have always been obsessed about the stock market so that's what I started writing about: https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/
It's been a fun journey. It's fun to go back in time and have a diary of what I was thinking re: investment ideas and investment philosophy, and how things played out.
To answer your questions more directly 1) Process -- i try to have a list of topics and a date I want to publish by. I try to do my writing in 2 or 3 sittings. I dont write everyday.
2) I think I answered above.
3) At first it was a personal commitment to myself, then i started telling a few people about it, and now i guess its a combination of seeing more people reading the articles and also not wanting to lose my habit of writing every week.
4) Struggles - it's been a big time commitment. Also, yes, it's a bit odd to put yourself out there but now I actually use it to my advantage - since I write about stocks, if I dont feel comfortable writing about something, I probably shouldn't be investing that way!
[+] [-] squeakynick|5 years ago|reply
1. Process: I keep a task list (using google tools) with a list of topic ideas. When I think of something I want to write about, or find interesting links, I place them there. There's typically about two dozen ideas at any time incubating.
2. Start: I started the blog about a dozen years ago as a way to add depth to my website that was the front-end for my consulting business. I stopped consulting shortly after starting, and am now retired, but I keep the blog up on that site; I've built a following. It was easy to start. Ideas are easy; the hard part is finding the free time to write!
3. Motivation. I love doing it. I get pleasure from writing. When I was a kid, I loved reading the works of Martin Gardner. I hope my blog could be seen some way as an homage to his works.
4. No real struggles, but I made a conscious choice to not enable comments on my site. Comments will get you down. Everyone is a critic. Jerks will say "that's not special, I could have don that" (hmmm, but you didn't). My email address is not hard to find on the site if you want to get in contact with me. Don't fret too much about publishing; do what is right for you. There is a whole spectrum of 'advice' from people saying regular rapid cadence (even if you have nothing to say), through to only publish gems. I typically average about one post a week. Some of my posts are lightweight, others are heavyweights.
[+] [-] stadeschuldt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k__|5 years ago|reply
2. I signed up on dev.to and wrote stuff about React/Webpack, because that was what I was working with at that time.
3. Success motivated me. I started in 2017 and since then I got a book deal and starting in 2020 my main income is from blogging.
4. Regularly finding new topics was my main problem.
https://kay.is
[+] [-] Insanity|5 years ago|reply
Since about half a year ago I blog semi-regularly on Medium. I know a lot of people on here don't like Medium links - although I had a few on the frontpage which was motivating.
To answer your questions:
1) I don't have a concrete one - I stumble something that peeks my interest, I try to understand the topic and then write down my thoughts on medium. Most of it is about Go.
2) I started in high school thinking my blogposts might help someone. I followed a lot of blogs myself and just liked the idea. It wasn't hard to start - as a teenager you always think you know everything so you're pretty careless. That didn't stay. :P
3) Honestly - I have no good answer to this because I regularly lose motivation. What I will say though - for all the dislike towards medium - seeing my stats does make me want to write more. A few of my blogposts are spontaniously shared on reddit / twitter, and are the first search result in google. So it generates daily traffic. I enjoy the idea that I'm actually helping people find an answer.
[+] [-] staysaasy|5 years ago|reply
2. It wasn't hard to start, you just need to stay motivated. I also highly recommend picking a stupidly simple stack for your blog. Do not let technology choices or rabbit holes get in the way of writing! We use Jekyll + Gitlab for CD, you can see it here at https://staysaasy.com/ and it's stupidly simple and free to maintain.
3. My engineering counterpart and I write our blog together. We're partners/counterparts at work and on our blog, and it's a huge motivator to have a partner in crime. I highly recommend this step!
4. In order to write more candidly about potentially sensitive management/leadership topics, we write anonymously as our company is reasonably well known in tech circles. Discipline is the key. Block time and take notes on what you want to write about so that you're never lacking in inspiration.
[+] [-] j-kent|5 years ago|reply
Once I have my ideas a bit organized and some time to write I'll look through the list and pick one that still speaks to me. I'll start with an outline of the main points that I want to hit and from there it just feels natural to fill it out.
I think the most important thing to do when blogging is to actually decide to write, and not futz around with all the other technical things involved. Do what you need to do to get your blog up and running and compartmentalize the writing from that other stuff (hosting, plugins, analytics, etc.). You can spend weeks just messing with that stuff and not have a single article posted.
P.S. I'm using a Jekyll template hosted on Github pages to power my blog. it was the fastest, easiest and cheapest way to get up and running IMHO. I'm never going back to wordpress.
[+] [-] sixhobbits|5 years ago|reply
I soon found Digital Ocean's writing program. They were paying $200 for blog posts, which was a lot as a student in South Africa.
Money was fairly motivating, but soon the long and slow editing process got tiring, so I started freelance blogging for a few other sites instead.
Then I created GitHub page[0] with links to places that pay for writing and links to some resources I enjoyed for learning how to write better.
Now I'm convinced that the fact that more and more companies are paying amateur bloggers for content means that there's a nieche for more professionally written content, so (shameless plug) I launched Ritza[1] (I'm focussing on it full time from today only, so it's still very rough!)
[0] https://github.com/sixhobbits/technical-writing/blob/master/...
[1] https://ritza.co
[+] [-] erikpl|5 years ago|reply
Student and writing enthusiast here ️
[+] [-] mortivore|5 years ago|reply
Internet is an interesting medium because once it's out there, it's not really out there forever. You can change it as much as you want.
I started after reading that having a blog was beneficial. This was from a perspective of building a personal brand. At the beginning I was trying to do 1 per week, but I became burnt out on that, and noticed I wasn't really pursuing things I cared about.
I'm trying to get back into it this year, and only writing about stuff that actually catches my interest. This leads to having an irregular writing schedule. This is considered bad practice for building a brand, but I'm no longer worried about building a brand. I want to have a place to put my thoughts together, and put out there when I happen to have them.
Even with this change in perspective I've noticed my ability to write posts has gotten much better from when I started.
Simple: Gatsby.js, github, netlify stack at https://carlchesterlloyd.com/
[+] [-] tlarkworthy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karanke|5 years ago|reply
1. Get an idea, write it down in Notes, mull over it for 2-3 weeks, do research and create an outline, write the article
2. I had something to get out there, so I wrote something on Friday. Committed to myself that I'd do the same next week and I'm now 4 weeks in.
3. I think of it as sharpening my writing muscle, especially with regard to what topics I choose and how I tell that story. I'm willing to consider a lot of my current work as a "throwaway" until I get better at my craft. Eventually, I'll develop a proper audience and hopefully, something will go viral.
4. Perfectionism was a big one, previously I would always put things off until they're perfect. Now I have to ship every Friday so I'm less focused on getting it perfect. Another was that the story I want to tell shifts while writing it, hopefully, I get better at this over time.
[+] [-] jjjbokma|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] genjipress|5 years ago|reply
2. I started blogging a long time ago -- more than 20 years, really -- but I was highly scattershot for a long time, and I'm not proud of a lot of the material I put out until about a decade or so ago. Focusing on a few topics of deep personal interest helped.
3. See last sentence of #2.
4. My biggest struggle was not feeling like I had nothing to offer anyone in terms of insight or whatnot. Eventually, I decided whatever it was that was mine would be more than enough.
https://www.genjipress.com
[+] [-] geerlingguy|5 years ago|reply
If I think it's interesting and/or would be helpful to share so others don't have to spend the time I did trying to figure out how to do the same thing (half the time yes, half no), I'll copy and paste the markdown into a new blog post on my Drupal-powered blog, jeffgeerling.com.
If I have the time, I'll spend 10 min to 1 hour cleaning up the text and getting it to 'publish'able form, and publish the post. Every so often, if I think it's a post worth sharing more widely, I'll hold off on publishing until mid-morning US Eastern time on a weekday as around that time seems to give my writing more traction if posted on HN/Reddit/Twitter/etc. Otherwise many articles just go into the void, but get picked up by random obscure Google searches.
2. I started writing in high school, just posting journal-style updates. In college I started posting some of these on a Xanga blog. Then I switched to a generated HTML blog, and for the past 8 years I've been using Drupal so I can easily edit on my phone as needed and have comments built in. The hardest part is writing, it's always hard to put down words that I'm okay with publishing. And choosing whether to actually publish what I write or not. It's also hard to keep comments from being horrible spam mess, which is why most people don't allow them. I think they provide a ton of benefit (especially for old content that would otherwise get stale and worthless) if you moderate them like I do, though, so I keep them.
3. I stay motivated by finding my own blog posts in Google Search after Google Search—so many times I have to solve the same problem over and over again. The blog is kind of my brain dump, over time, so I devote less of my memory trying to remember random complex processes and more time doing new things.
[+] [-] _bxg1|5 years ago|reply