Welcome to Winter!
This is the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The Winter Equinox! Ok, some people say it is tomorrow, but they are obviously just wrong. 
It’s dark. And Cold.
Good thing I am in the lab where it is warm. 
Working. As usual. Way past my bedtime. Working on server migrations, script adjustments, getting some design work done, hiring some people, building some sites and generating traffic. You know what else I am doing? Ok, you caught me, I am taking a break. But during that break I am also posting on my blogs!
I published a couple articles on my other blogs and also am writing this rather bizarre article. Part of the secret to successful blogging is having a regular schedule to your publications. Ideally, you will publish at the exact same time every time you do. This keeps your regulars, um, regular. 
Not all of us are that scheduled though. Some of us even have a hard time publishing daily. This blog, I don’t plan on publishing to daily, but my other ones I do. Sure must be hard for me to write all those articles everyday! If you think I do that, you must not be really reading this article. In case you didn’t notice, it is pretty bad.
The trick to producing good content on a regular basis is to have your material lined up in advance. A good blogger needs to have a list of topics picked out, sources to link or cite and various articles in some form of completion or another. Even this blog, where I do not maintain a regular publishing schedule, I have about 8 articles that range from titles only with brief notes in the bodies all the way up to almost finished articles. This blog rarely has finished articles waiting to be published, but my others do. Usually.
To produce good writing, it takes a process. It doesn’t just happen and it CERTAINLY does not happen on a schedule. If you have done any writing at all, you know what it is to stare at a blank page and not be able to think of anything to say. It winds up making you grasp at a straw. Like a certain annual celestial occurrence. This becomes more pronounced when you MUST write something NOW!
The process that works for me is pretty basic. My writing’s are also pretty basic too though, so it works for me.
Anytime I think of an idea for an article or find a source for an article, I immediately open my blog and add this idea as an article. Usually, this is just a title and then some notes or a link or two. A lot of times, this will lead to a rash of ideas. They all get treated the same, just a title and quick notes. When I run out of ideas, I either go back to what I was doing before or I move on to the next step.
When I feel like actually writing a blog post, I look at my available topics and see what needs to be written or what looks like fun to write. The rough notes start to become text. This goes on for as long as it takes to write the words that need to be written. Sometimes, a few words will do and sometimes, you find you are forking articles out of the one you were writing. This is a blog, not a book. I write as long as I feel like. Some days I can’t stop myself from writing. Like today. Today I wrote and worked on a bunch of pretty important blog articles. Important to me, of course. In an exhausted break moment, I even went to write a quick post…. look at me go.
You write while the writing is good. You stop when it ceases to be fun.
This part is pretty important. After I finish creating an article, I try and save it and leave it alone. If I still feel inspired to write for my blogs, I will move on to another article. If I do not have one ready to work on or none available look like fun, I might start to riff on an idea… something apt to be silly even… like the first day of winter (or is it?!?) These riffs can lead to some really good articles. AFTER THEY GET PUT AWAY AND EDITED ANOTHER DAY!
This article sucks. That is part of it’s purpose. To show you what happens to a good concept when you do not use an editing process. I started writing this article and I kept going till now. I will proof read it, but I will not save it for review later before publishing.
This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is an example of how you make BAD blog art.
The example is to prove the point that a process needs to be followed.
Why is it important to put this stuff away before publishing it? Well, for one reason, Author’s suck at English usually. We are too busy trying to get thoughts out through our finger tips to bother with prper spellin and our grammer be bad to and our sentances can run on and we can just kinda babble… ok, you get the point…. This compounds though when we proof read our stuff right after writing it. The subject is fresh in our minds and it all makes marvelous sense to us. Until we read it tomorrow and have a hard time figuring how monkeys got access to the server.
Screw it, I have to finish some work and go to bed… make good art and don’t rush it.
Edit your stuff and maintain a standard.
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